


Dance for me, Tom

by edvic



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1940s, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Retail, Diagon Alley, Falling In Love, Forgiveness, Letters, M/M, Post-Hogwarts, Rating will change, Slow Burn, Time Travel, flatmates, lots of feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-10-13 21:37:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20589515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edvic/pseuds/edvic
Summary: Harry lives a fairly happy life after the war. Before he knows, he’s on top of his department, with his own cozy place, more gold than he could ever spend and a few good friends around. He feels like he should be happier with all he has. But he’s not. When one day Draco Malfoy offers him a mysterious package full of letters addressed to “Tom”, Harry decides to give the world another chance for a better ending.





	1. The longest walk

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Tomarry Bigbang 2019. New chapters will be posted every Saturday. Rating will change. 
> 
> It's my first story after a looooong writer's block, please enjoy it as much as I did writing it.

When he sees Draco Malfoy for the third time in a single day, Harry starts thinking something may be off. He breathes in and out for exactly four times before his brain gets a chance to think about the unthinkable. No, he’s not back. He’s dead. 

On the fifth breath in Harry looks at Malfoy sitting on the opposite end of the table. He’s looking at him too and doesn’t even pretend not to.

Something is off. 

Hermione keeps talking about the resurgence of anti-Muggle propaganda and the attack in Manchester, but Harry can’t focus for too long. He’s not looking at Malfoy anymore - his eyes are set on Percy Weasley’s self-writing quill - but he feels Malfoy is looking at him nonetheless. It feels odd. 

Like the good old days, he thinks. It’s been a while since he’s felt like this. Like a circus clown or an object in a museum. Something to look at with fascination or fear or disgust. With an opinion.

These days, people simply avoid looking at him at all. 

The change was subtle at first and some time had to pass before he noticed. Then more and more often he found himself outside of events. Yes, he was the head auror, he had his own office, but did his team ever visit him? Ever since Ron started working on that Manchester case Harry felt like it was his best friend and not him who was in the spotlight. He thought he didn’t mind. That he shouldn’t mind because before it was always him. But now… It all feels different. Like he’s air. Invisible. He’s not necessary to live though, he thinks. So maybe not air in the end. See through then. Like he’s wearing his Invisibility Cloak all the time.

“Harry,” he hears once everyone says what they had to say, “Could you spare me a minute?’

Malfoy’s voice sounds as natural as if they are friends. There’s something soft about it too and Harry doesn’t know why, but he likes it. A bit.

He nods.

His eyes are the colour of cloudy sky, he thinks.

They walk in silence for a minute. Harry sees Hermione giving him a look.

“So,” he starts, but Malfoy says:

“I was tidying up father’s things.”

Then, he stops.

Harry’s not sure if he can imagine Draco Malfoy tidying up anything.

He looks at Draco, but Draco is looking at his sparkling clean shoes.

They’re standing in front of Harry’s office but they’re not going in.

“I thought,” Draco says, then stops again. 

Harry thinks Draco looks so little like he used to. He thinks he likes him better this way.

“I thought you should have these,” Draco says in the end and once the words leave his mouth he seems relieved. Harry sees the line of his shoulders soften.

Suddenly, there’s a package in his right hand. Draco’s fingers are warm and a bit sweaty.

“Don’t ask how father got them,” Draco says when Harry raises his brows. “I don’t know. And now he won’t be able to tell me anymore.”

If there’s a note of sadness in Draco, it’s more in his cloudy eyes than his voice. Harry thinks he’s never realized just how easy to read they are. Sadness, anger, loneliness. And pride. There’s still so much of it in Draco Malfoy, the very last of his ancient house.

“Why,” he tries to ask, but Malfoy doesn’t let him.

“I thought,” he says. Then, a breath. “You’re the only person who comes to mind, aren’t you?”

There’s a smile, a hint of the sneer Harry remembers. 

He smiles back.

Something passes between them and Harry feels as if he’s about to discover something he never knew. For a moment, Draco looks a bit younger and a bit happier.

Then, it passes.

Two parchment planes fly by them. A third one stops at Harry’s door and keeps circling above his head.

“I guess,” Draco says, but the thought goes somewhere else. Instead, he says, “Goodbye, Harry.”

Again, there’s that odd feeling Harry gets. If he was better with words, he’d find one to describe it.

Draco walks away. Harry looks at him for a long moment. There’s no wind underground, but Draco’s cloak keeps moving. It makes him look like a painting. 

When he disappears behind the corner, Harry looks at his hands. 

The old envelope says simply _ Tom _.

***

“What would you like to talk about today, Harry?”

It’s the same question every Monday and every Monday Harry acts as if he doesn’t know. He pretends to think about it for a minute, then says he doesn’t know. Then, they move to talking about his childhood again.

They went through his early years with the Dursleys and his parents’ murder.

But today is different and before Georgie can ask another question, Harry says:

“I want to talk about something.”

Georgie gives him a bit of a surprised look, but seems overall ready. Maybe she thinks she’s won, Harry thinks.

Then he thinks if she knew, she’d never be ready.

“When I was a kid,” he says. He’s not sure where to go from there. His hands are on the pillow he’s usually holding on his lap during sessions. A barrier, Georgie said one time but never told him not to do it.

“When you were living with you aunt? Or when you were at school?” Georgie helps him. He must’ve been silent for too long.

“When I was at school,” he says. “My second year.”

“Ok,” she says. She writes it down.

Harry wonders what else is written in his file and if he’d be surprised with it.

“I met someone,” he says. “Another student.”

He’s gone over it for so many times in his head he almost believes in the lie.

“Someone from you class?” Georgie asks. He told her about Hermione and Ron and Draco. And Neville.

“No,” he says. “Someone older.”

Harry thinks there’s curiosity in Georgie’s eyes.

“Would you like to tell me more about them?” She asks, always the same steady soft voice. Harry thinks she could read audio-books.

He takes a breath in, then out. His hands are getting sweaty on the pillow, but he’s determined.

“He wasn’t exactly my friend,” he says. It’s an odd way to put it, he thinks. “We met by chance. I found his… diary.”

He’s silent for a moment and Georgie asks:

“Did you read it?”

“Yes- I mean,” he’s not sure what to say; he’s not prepared for this particular question, “He let me. I… gave it back to him.”

“Is this how you two met?” Georgie asks.

Harry nods. His thoughts feel chaotic all of a sudden.

“He told me about his time at school, when I- wasn’t there. Yet.”

Technically, not a lie.

Georgie looks at him, as if waiting for more. He’s not sure if there is more he wants to say. 

“It sounds like you two were pretty close, Harry,” Georgie says. “Are you still in touch?”

Another question he’s not sure what to do with.

“No,” he decides in the end. “He died that year.”

Georgie’s eyes change again. It’s as if she’s decided that was it - the thing that brought Harry to her in the first place. Harry thinks she’s not wrong.

“How did he die?” She asks.

“I-” Harry has no idea what to say. He has no idea what he feels either. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“Ok.”

Georgie writes something down again. Harry can feel his heart beating somewhere in his throat.

“Maybe you could tell me how it made you feel?” Georgie says after a minute. “His death?”

“I was relieved,” Harry says before he thinks. “At first. I was tired and relieved.”

Georgie rises her brows a bit, but quickly covers it nodding a few times.

“You said _ at first _. Can I assume you feel different about it now?”

“Sometimes,” he says, and the words he thinks every day leave his mouth at last, “sometimes I feel like I’m not the same person anymore because of it.”

“How so?” Georgie asks. 

Harry thinks for a long moment. 

“It’s,” he says. He’s not sure. Something heavy turns in his stomach. “It feels like he took a piece of me.”

“And sometimes,” he says before Georgie can interrupt him. “It almost feels like I miss him.”

“Would that be so bad?” Georgie asks. When he nods, she says: “Why?”

Harry isn’t sure which part of it he wants to touch on first. Instead, he lets the question hung between them in the silence of Georgie's office.

***

He waits till all the lights in the building across the street fall dark. He’s not sure why. Maybe it’s some irrational fear of being spied on. If so, he knows more threat would come from within his own house than the silent outside.

He makes tea and then - for a brief moment - thinks about going downstairs to the 24/7 shop and grabbing a bottle of vodka, but it’s late and he’s not wearing pants. He can feel his hands sweat. It’s been an awfully hot summer.

The letters are waiting on his desk. He kept checking the drawer every ten minutes throughout the evening, hoping perhaps that they would be gone. That they’d disappear and leave him alone. Why did Malfoy bring them to him? 

At last, he sits down. He puts some music on before realizing how much more weird it makes the whole thing. Harry Potter, sitting at his desk in the middle of the night, reading Voldemort’s private letters, listening to _ hottest tunes of the second week of July _, as the radio has announced.

“God,” he says. “When did you become such a coward?”

Hearing his own voice makes him feel a bit better and he opens the first envelope, the one sent to _ Tom _.

“Tom,” he reads, but doesn’t dare to go on out loud.

_Tom_, he reads, _your tree by the river_ _has turned gold again. The old man keeps insisting there’s no reason to be happy about autumn starting - you know him, he’d rather run away to someplace sunny - but I can’t find a single sad thought in my mind when everything I see reminds me of you. You don’t remember, but I laughed at you_

The page ends unexpectedly with no signature and when Harry turns it, the sentence doesn’t match.

_ a busy man with no time for this. Sometimes I ask myself - do you think about me at all? Do you think about the day when we’ll share breaths again, drunk with nothing more than ourselves? And though the world wants me to doubt, I trust you. _

“Jesus,” he says. His voice sounds oddly unreal in the silence of his apartment and he regrets turning the radio off.

He puts the letter back into the envelope and the envelope back into the drawer.

Then, he walks out to his tiny balcony and takes three breaths in and out.

What the fuck was that, he wants to ask, but he’s not sure who exactly would have the answer. He can’t see the stars. Down in the street Harry sees a stray dog and it reminds him of Sirius. Something inside him aches. It’s been so long someone would think he’s gotten over it already.

He thinks about the letter again. He’s not sure what he was expecting, but-

“Definitely not that,” Harry says out loud. The night is warm but suddenly he’s no longer sweaty. 

There was someone, he thinks, someone who- 

He doesn’t dare think it. Even a friend seems like too much of a stretch.

Did Dumbledore know, Harry wonders next. His thoughts are jumping from one place to another and he can’t focus on a single thread. If Dumbledore did know, why didn’t he tell him.

For a million reasons, he tells himself. Like he didn’t tell him so many other things.

This makes sense, he has to admit. For a single long breath his thoughts seem in order.

Then, they jump again.

But who? Why? There are so many questions he wants answered and he’s not even sure why. It’s an old tale by now. Some days it feels more like a bad dream than something that has happened. Or so everyone is trying to make it look like. There’s that one day in May when they commemorate the fallen, but with each passing year it seems less sincere. Sometimes, though Harry knows he shouldn’t be thinking this way, it feels as if they’re doing it for him. That - if he wasn’t there - they’d rather forget.

_Tom_, the words come back to him, _your tree by the river_ _has turned gold again._

There’s something so heartbreakingly familial about them and Harry’s no longer sure what they make him feel. 

_ Sometimes _ , other words come back, _ it almost feels like I miss him. _

“Fuck,” he says. What’s wrong with him?

He stares at the dog outside for a few minutes more. Then the dog disappears and Harry realizes his feet are ice cold.

Going back inside, he tries not to look at his desk.

***

He wants to stop reading, but he can’t make himself. The handwriting - somewhat familiar, he thinks sometimes - is fascinating and the person behind it even more.

_ I can’t stop wishing. And how regretful I feel about not loving you sooner. And yet - I have felt much, but there’s still more to feel. I long to go to where you are now and stay always. _

_ It’s evening already. How time flies every time I think about you. _

Some days he thinks it may all be a joke, but then the words come again, too sincere - too mad - to be a joke. Malfoy wouldn’t do it to him. Were these, Harry wonders, from Lucius.

He doesn’t think so, though he’s not exactly sure why. There’s no signature.

But they were from someone important, clearly. From someone so important Voldemort kept them even when everyone forgot what his real name was.

_ Tom. _

_ I wrote down your name and kissed the ink. _

_ It’s late and my hand hurts, the old man won’t give me a break, but I don’t want to stop writing to you yet. Somewhere, wherever you are reading my words, I’m taking your time. _

_ Is it evening where you are? Or are you reading my letter in the morning sun? Are you tired, are you lonely? _

_ I’ll think about you before I close my eyes, I promise. I’ll hope to see you in my dreams. _

Harry finds himself reading the letters over and over again.

He always has one with him - for when he’s bored at work, he tells himself - and then, before he realizes, he’s reading again.

Someone was waiting for him, he thinks. Someone was waiting.

Maybe when he was travelling, he thinks. When he was in Albania. Or maybe when he was visiting people for Borgin and Burkes. Maybe someone was waiting for him when he was murdering Hepzibah Smith.

He wakes up thinking about that someone and goes to bed wondering what exactly went wrong. He wonders if that someone ended up like everyone else who got too close to Tom. Dead. Or hating him.

***

_ And then you kissed me, _ Harry reads. He’s sitting outside and the sun is setting slowly, _ and I could swear I still feel the empty buzzing in my head, as if there was nothing else in this world, nothing but the two of us. You are mine. _

“What are you doing?”

He turns so quickly something cracks in his neck.

“Nervous?” Ginny smiles. Harry notices how bright she looks. How happy. “Why are you hiding from us?”

“I’m not,” he says.

But it’s not true.

He never wanted this, the big birthday party.

He’s been feeling odd, even before the letters. First he thought he was simply tired. So he slept and slept and slept, but it didn’t help. So he started running, someone told him he should. It made him exhausted and he slept better. Still, he was never at peace.

He's learned to observe. It wasn’t his strong suit before. Now, he knew things. He knew his secretary, a girl called Mel, was seeing someone from Magical Sports. They’d pass notes during work hours and she’d smile and pretend not to when he walked by. He knew that Hermione was pregnant. She hasn’t told him yet, but he noticed she stopped drinking coffee. More than anything, she seemed different. Hopeful. Then, he realized. Sometime between the last battle and now, he stopped feeling hopeful. What would he hope for, he wondered. He didn’t know. Sometime between the last battle and now, he’s changed. 

Or maybe everyone else has changed and he hasn’t.

So he didn’t want a party. But Mrs Weasley promised she wouldn’t invite anyone he doesn’t like and she seemed so worried about him looking tired he had to say yes. You’re not eating well, she told him. And you’re definitely not sleeping well either, honey. Then Ron said Harry had to agree and that clearly it was a tradition at this point. Then it was Mr Weasley. Then Bill. Even Percy stopped by his office and said he _ had to _. But when Ginny wrote him, threatening she may as well never speak to him again, Harry - who already promised to come to his own birthday - knew there was truly no other choice.

He still feels odd around her. Almost regretful. Out of the two of them, she looks like the winner.

He can’t stop wondering if they were together, would she still be like this. He thinks he knows the answer and it keeps him grounded.

She’s looking at him with curiosity. Like before, he’s a riddle she wants to solve.

Then her face changes so quickly Harry thinks she may be in pain.

Are you ok, he wants to ask, but before he can, Ginny says:

“Where did you get this?”

She’s pointing at the letter. He’s already forgotten about it.

Before he knows, Ginny catches the page and read the first few lines. There’s a glimpse of realization in her eyes and she reminds Harry of a cat ready to attack.

“Where did you find it, Harry?” She asks again. There’s a frown on her face and Harry remembers all the things he’s felt for her. Some he may be feeling still.

In the golden light her hair looks aflame.

“Malfoy gave it to me,” he says. 

She snorts.

“Doesn’t it sound familiar to you, Harry?”

She’s mad. Harry’s not sure why.

A moment later, it comes to him.

“It’s not,” he says, but she’s quicker.

“It’s not like the diary?” She says. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”

Harry opens his mouth, but she’s not done yet.

“It’s exactly like the diary,” she says. She’s not speaking loud, but Harry can feel every word pierce through him. “A Malfoy gave it to me, remember?”

Of course I do, he wants to say, but instead he says:

“I’m sorry.”

Ginny looks angry with him and he doesn’t want her to be upset. As usual, he doesn’t know what’s the right thing to say to her.

“It’s your life, Harry,” she says. She’s not looking at him anymore. “But would he ever spend so much time on you if you were dead?”

She leaves him with it and he thinks she never knew Tom like he did.

***

He’s not sure when the thought comes to him for the first time, but before he knows why, there’s a time turner hidden deep in his drawer. The idea is born even if it’s still vague. 

So Harry waits for it to grow up. He goes to work. He eats lunch with Hermione. She tells him about the child at last. He reads the letters. One day Ron asks him if everything is ok and he says that he’s just tired. The idea keeps shape-shifting in his head like a cloud on a windy day.

***

He’s almost ready, he thinks.

There’s the note on his desk and the enchanted will, just in case. 

He wonders how long will they be talking about it. How long before they truly forget. Before there’s nothing but a hero’s name left behind. Ultimately, if everything goes according to plan, there won’t even be a name. There’ll be a person.

He’s packed, he thinks. Books and clothes and gold. His snitch. The sweater Mrs Weasley made for him and one of the notebooks he got from Hermione back in school. He never used them properly. 

His flat looks clean, but not too clean. As if he left for a walk. A very long walk.

There is another way, he thinks, looking at his bag, but he doesn’t seem so sure. A world where none of this has to happen.

Where he gets his life back, he thinks. Where everyone he loves is alive. Where he’s a person and not a name. Or where there’s a person like him, even if not quite the same. A different Harry. He doesn’t know how it’ll work out. If not for himself, he should do it for everyone else.

He looks at the letters in his hands. They seem like a promise and suddenly he’s worried it may be a fake one.

Then, he sets them on fire. No one can know. No one would understand, he thinks.

_ You are here - I ask myself if I’m still alive, _ he reads, watching the flame eat the parchment slowly, _ I have wanted to write you not once and not twice today, but time after time, until you’d grow sick of me. _

_ Come see me. Should I beg? _

_ I beg then, come see me. _


	2. Love Death Birth

Harry looks at the house and tries to remember. He’s staring so intently his head starts hurting.

He can’t remember, of course. All he has is the scream and the light, the green light that used to haunt his dreams.

There’s a newspaper at the doormat. It’s some Muggle magazine Harry’s never heard of. It’s his mum’s, isn’t it? In a heartbeat, she becomes much more real than she ever was to him.

“James?” He hears somewhere behind his back and freezes on the spot. “Back so soon?”

He turns and she’s there.

She’s wearing a blue dress and carrying a bag full of potatoes. She has more freckles than he remembers from pictures. Maybe it’s the sun, he thinks. She’s looking at him and keeps her other hand, the one not carrying the bag, on her baby bump.

She’s more than he’s ever dreamed of and if not the shock, Harry thinks he might burst into tears. 

“Oh,” she says now, coming closer. “You’re not James, are you?”

She seems slightly suspicious. Maybe she’s afraid, Harry thinks, but then she says:

“Sirius, is this some stupid joke?”

He can’t help but smile.

“I’m afraid not,” he says. “Just a plain old Potter.”

She keeps her eyes on him for a moment and then she smiles too.

“James never said we’re expecting guests.”

She walks by and before he knows he’s sitting on an old couch drinking cold orange juice.

“So you’re a cousin,” she says. 

He nods.

“A distant one.”

“And you live… ?”

“Abroad,” he says quickly. “Mostly. I travel a lot.”

He takes another sip of his juice and she observes him.

“James never mentioned he had a Harry in the family.”

“There are so many of us,” he says. He tries not to look away but her eyes are so green. “I can hardly remember my first cousins’ names, let alone third.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’d remember,” she says. “We were thinking about calling him Harry. If it’s a boy.” 

She points at her bump and Harry feels his ears burn.

“Oh,” he says. “Is it-”

“Soon,” she says. “Hopefully. My back is killing me.”

He’s not sure what to say to this, but she doesn’t seem to mind.

Instead, she asks: “Will you be staying for dinner?” and before he has a chance to say “no”, she’s up, wand in her hand.

He tries to go too and help, but she puts a hand on his shoulder and tells him not to. The push is insistent and Harry tries not to focus on it too much. The thought appears nonetheless - it’s his mo, touching him, his real mother, all flesh and bones and red hair and a smile, telling him she’ll manage. He can only nod without words.

She leaves him alone with the orange juice and the house he doesn’t remember.

“This is not how time works,” Harry says to himself. He can hear his mother in the other room, preparing the extra plate she promised him. 

He gets up too and looks at the pictures on the wall. He knows some of them. Sirius is waving at him from the one from his parents’ wedding. Next to him, there’s a still photograph of his mother and aunt Petunia. They can’t be older than he was when he got his letter. Is this their last picture together, he can’t help wondering.

In the next picture, he sees the four of them. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs. It must be their last day of school. They’re smiling. Lupin looks a bit uneasy. Full moon, Harry thinks. His father is standing between Sirius and Peter, his arms around them. They don’t know yet, he thinks, watching Peter’s face. It’s not too late. Something in him wants to scream.

If he told them now, he thinks, how much would change? If not Peter, someone else could betray them. And if not, they’d never be safe anyway. Not when Voldemort was out there, looking for him, always looking.

He hears some door open. Then, he hears his father’s voice.

This is not how time works,” he thinks again. They’re already in the circle.

He picks up his bag. 

Something comes up to his mind and he takes it off again. The photo book, he took it too.

Maybe someday, he thinks, he’ll figure it all out.

In the picture, he’s standing next to Hermione and Ron in the Room of Requirement. They look tired but happy. Ron keeps pretending he’s not looking at Hermione and she keeps trying to put a stray lock of hair in place. He’s looking at the camera and suddenly Harry remembers what he felt that day. Proud, he was so proud of all of them.

Merry Christmas, Harry, he reads at the back. Colin.

It stings.

He leaves the photo on the table, next to his half empty glass, and walks out. 

The sun is shining again and he knows soon enough his parents will be taking him on walks.

He looks at the house he knows but doesn’t remember. The walls are white and the grass in the garden is probably a bit too high. He’s not sure how his mother and aunt Petunia can be sister. Then he thinks he may have a sister too. It makes him feel something new. There are two bowls next to the back door. No one told him they had a cat. 

“Goodbye,” he says.

The house doesn’t reply. Harry doesn’t mind.

***

He tries to remember as much as he can from the memories Dumbledore showed him and determine a point. A single point to change it all. 

So he jumps. First, he lands too far away. He’s looking for the hut in the woods, but it’s nowhere to be found. It’s winter and he has to use magic to keep himself warm. He realizes he didn’t bring a coat.

Then, he lands a bit too late. There’s the hut, but Merope is nowhere to be found. Too late, he thinks. Too late.

It’s hard to pinpoint the day he should do it and when he lies down at night, he knows he’s not even sure how he wants to do it. How, when and what exactly.

They can’t run away, he thinks, but it doesn’t seem right.

The more he thinks about it, the more the memories come back to him. The house, the woman, the fear. The prince too.

She can’t die, Harry thinks. But she can’t live like that either. No one should.

He can’t sleep that night. All of a sudden, his plan crumbles to dust. Then he realizes he had no plan to begin with.

When he gets up, the hut is there. Not as ugly as he remembers it from Morphin’s last memory, but ugly enough to make people stay away.

And yet, he hears a horse. He sees a rider.

They’re so painfully similar when he first sees him Harry almost calls him with the other one in mind. But once Tom Sr. gets closer Harry sees the difference clearly. In details, they’re nothing alike. Tom Sr. keeps his back straight, but not in the way Tom Jr. did. Tom Sr. looks around like a lord, but he truly is one, not an imposer like Tom Jr. was. In the end, Tom Sr. has an air of confident happiness around him, something Tom Jr. might’ve never truly felt.

Harry watches him from his hiding place, thinking about the way he died. The way he will die. Was he surprised to see his almost perfect copy before it happened? Did he know at all, did he realize it was his own son? Or did he think it had to be a ghost, a demon?

This too won’t have to happen, Harry thinks. He’s not sure if he’s happy about it.

On his left, he hears a new sound. It’s Merope. 

She smiles at Tom Sr. and it makes her look almost pretty. 

He can’t help wondering what’s in it for him. Is he so cruel it makes him amused to play with her, knowing how much he means to her?

He used to think it was the Gaunts, the Slytherin in Tom that made him the way he was, but maybe he was wrong.

She gives him a glass of water and they talk for a moment so short Harry doesn’t bother to listen. It’s always the same - how are you and then the weather and if his parents are well and if he’ll come back tomorrow. But today he must’ve said something new because Merope looks away and Tom Sr. touches her hair before disappearing. Harry is sure she’ll be thinking about whatever he said till they meet again. And one of these days - soon, if he’s right - she’ll slip a few drops of Amortentia into the water he drinks so eagerly.

He has to act quickly.

“Hello,” he says. It’s a start.

She spots him behind the tree and the fear he remembers comes back to her face. It’s in the way her arms curl and her neck bends. She seems smaller now. But most of all, it’s in her eyes. Harry thinks he’s seen it before, the same fear. Irrational and conditioned all the same. For the first time in his life, he sees a piece of Tom in her.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says. He doesn’t move. She reminds him of a scared dog. “I was wondering if we could talk.” She’s not moving either. Harry starts feeling desperate. “About you son,” he says.

She seems equally suspicious and curious. Maybe, Harry thinks, she sees him as some forest spirit. If only forest spirits wore jeans and leather.

“I don’t have a son,” she says.

Harry realizes he’s never heard her voice before. It’s quiet, but not as helpless as he thought it would be. Somewhere there, she’s proud. She’s strong.

“But you will,” he says. Now, she’s listening. “And the man you just talked to will be his father.”

“Tom Riddle?” She says. She doesn’t sound overly surprised. But in the end, she’s planned it all already.

“Yes,” he says. “You will have a son. And then you will die.”

Harry reads all her emotions without her saying a word. How she reminds him of Tom in that moment. She’s shocked at first and then disappointed, then - sad, but finally, her face starts resembling a mask of acceptance, something beyond the reach of death or fate or bad luck.

“My son,” she says. “Will he live?”

Harry nods. He feels like something is escaping him. This is not how he thought it would go. He thought there’d be crying for sure, and maybe screaming too. But this is like nothing he’s imagined.

“Then if I have to, I’ll go,” she says. “If my son lives-”

“No,” he says, suddenly angry himself. “You don’t understand!”

Before he can stop himself, he’s right next to her, his hands on her arms.

“You have to live,” he says. He’s so close he sees how scared she is again. She’s shaking. Or maybe it’s him. “You have to live. For him.”

“But,” she tries to say something, but her voice dies down in her throat. 

Harry is annoyed and disappointed and angry. 

“You can’t die,” he says, and suddenly his vision seems blurry. Did his whole plan rely only on this, he wonders. “You can’t die.”

It’s him who’s shaking now, he’s sure. He feels helpless and stupid.

“You’re hurting me,” he hears Merope say. She doesn’t seem so scared anymore.

Harry looks up. His hands are still on her arms, gripping tightly. 

He blinks.

“Sorry,” he says. 

He lets her go, but she doesn’t move. 

“Who are you?” She says. She’s looking at him with some newfound courage, Harry thinks. “And why do you care about my son so much?”

Harry blinks again. He shakes his head. He cares about her, he wants to say, but the words don’t leave his mouth for some reason. Maybe they’re a lie. Maybe he really cares about Tom that much. Why wouldn’t he, Harry thinks. In the end, Tom is the source of all his misery and he’s only trying to stop it from happening.

“Do you know my son?” Merope says. 

Harry notices she’s looking at him carefully, as if trying to figure him out. 

“You’re not from here,” she says. “Did Tom send you?”

It’s all going into a direction Harry doesn’t like. He wonders if it’s time to use his wand or if disappearing without a word would be enough. Maybe he should start over, go back and start over.

“Don’t you dare think he loves you,” he says in the end. His voice is quiet. “He never will. But your son,” he says, looking up at her again, “your son might.”

***

He runs away that day, but can’t help coming back. Just to be sure.

It’s all as he has planned it. 

She drugs Tom Sr. and they run away. It’s not easy to find them, but he manages in the end. They’re staying in London, but when he looks into their heads - just to be sure, Harry tells himself - there’s a sense of temporariness. He knows the Riddles are mad, but surely it won’t last too long. Not once their grandson is born. 

He stays around. Just to be sure. He checks if Merope is still feeding Tom Sr. Amortentia. She is.

Then, before Harry realizes, Tom Jr. is born. He doesn’t see him, but he hears him cry.

He stays long enough to see Merope walk out of their tenement house with Tom Sr. by her side and Tom Jr. in her arms. She pretends she can’t see Harry on the other side of the street, but Harry knows she does.

He smiles. She doesn’t smile back.

Then, Harry jumps.

***

He’s not sure what day it is and once he’s there it hits him that the keys in his hand may not lead to his flat. Because it may not be his at all. Maybe he’s not even an Auror, he realizes.

There’s nowhere else he can think of though and it won’t hurt to check. 

Or so he thinks.

He apparates not far away from his place. He stays invisible. Just in case.

For a moment, everything seems intact.

Then, he sees the tape.

It’s yellow like in the movies he watches sometimes, all the way across the main entrance. 

It may be something else, he tries to tell himself. Something else happened here when he wasn’t around. 

There’s no one in sight. He thinks he should go in and check what’s going on, but he’s afraid. He doesn’t really want to know, he thinks. As long as he doesn’t know he can hope.

Harry sighs. He feels tired and - for some reason - old. 

The street is deserted and Harry realizes even the 24/7 liquor store is closed. Odd. But he puts his Invisibility Cloak on and grabs his wand and crosses the street.

There are wards all over the place. He recognizes Ron’s work. It makes something in his guts twist. He’s uneasy. Maybe he feels guilty too, but doesn’t want to think about it now. He knew the price. 

Maybe he should’ve left a letter. Maybe Ron and Hermione would understand.

He doesn’t dare walk in. There are probably alarms and traps on the other side of the door. Maybe even Aurors somewhere nearby. Maybe they think he was kidnapped.

He thinks what to do next. He has no idea. Clearly, something went wrong despite all his efforts.

Or maybe it’s not the right time, he thinks, even though he has a proof of Ron’s magic right in front of his eyes. Maybe it’s someone else’s flat. Or maybe that other Harry - this time’s Harry - disappeared too.

He walks out into the street again. He sees the stray dog he remembers but tries to push the thought away. It’s not the same dog probably, he thinks before he apparates again.

Privet Drive is quiet too, though at least here it doesn’t seem unnatural. Uncle Vernon’s car is parked in front of the house and through the open window Harry hears the evening news. The light in Dudley’s room is turned on. Everything seems perfectly normal.

Harry’s not sure what is he doing here. Is he going to ask Aunt Petunia how is she doing? Or maybe he should walk in uninvited and check if there’s anything in the bedroom - the smallest one - that’d prove he’d been here before. He thinks he’s being dumb again. That his plan is not really a plan but an odd chase, though he’s not sure who he’s after. Or if maybe he's pray.

To his left, he hears a familiar sound. On the far end of the street he notices Mrs Figg, slowly walking home with a bag full of cat food. The cans clink with every step she takes.

She can’t see him, but Harry observes. Is it his imagination or does she really stop in front of No. 4 for the shortest moment? No, that can’t be it.

Still, he follows her, not sure what else he could do.

He keeps his distance but still it surprises him when she stops suddenly near the rose alley. Weird. She looks to the left and then to the right, as if expecting something to happen.

Then, it happens.

Harry takes a step back when the man appears, even though he can’t be seen.

In the white lamplight, Draco Malfoy looks like a ghost.

“Good evening,” he hears Draco say. 

Mrs Figg nods shortly, like a soldier would.

“No news,” she says. 

Harry has no idea what this is about and wonders if he could ever imagine a more ridiculous pair.

“No news at the Ministry either,” Draco says. He seems tired. “They’re looking at all the wrong places.”

“If he doesn’t want to be found,” Mrs Figg says with an unyielding certainty, “we won’t find him. No matter how hard we try.”

“I hope we won’t,” Draco says.

Mrs Figg looks at Draco in a funny way, Harry thinks, but she doesn’t say anything.

“I’ll keep observing them,” she says instead. “I’m used to it by now.”

Draco nods. He’s not looking at Mrs Figg anymore. Instead, he looks at the house at Privet Drive No. 4 right through Harry and Harry feels odd. Draco looks as determined as he did back when he was trying to murder Dumbledore. He’s not sure if he should be worried.

Mrs Figg says her goodbye and promises to meet Draco at the same spot next week. Draco stays where he is a few moments longer and then spins and disappears.

Something, Harry thinks, something went terribly wrong.

***

He jumps back again.

He talks to Merope again. 

This time though, he doesn’t wait. He knows how it’ll go, doesn’t he? So he jumps a few months instead and walks into winter in London. 

Last time, it wasn’t snowing, he thinks. But maybe he remembers it all wrong. Maybe it was some other winter, some other time.

He finds the house they all lived in - Merope, Tom Sr., Tom Jr. - but they’re not there. The windows are shut and the place seems abandoned.

Harry’s not sure what it means.

He wanders here and there, checks the few places where he’s seen them before. He visits the Diagon Alley too. Just in case, even though he’s only seen Merope there once.

She’s nowhere to be found.

Then, another place comes to his mind. 

There’s snow everywhere when he arrives in Little Hangleton. On the ground and in the trees and on the roof of Riddle’s manor.

He’s not sure what to do next. He’s not sure if he wants to know.

Unlike the windows in London, the ones in Little Hangleton are well lit. When he comes closer, he sees a warm fireplace and it reminds him of Gryffindor tower.

At the table, he sees Tom Sr. Next to him, he sees his father. On the other side of the table, his mother. They all look perfectly fine, as if nothing has ever disturbed the peace of this house. Harry knows it can’t be true. He’s seen Merope run away. He’s seen Tom Sr. under the spell.

How, he wants to know. Why.

He looks at the Riddles one last time. He wonders if they deserve the mercy. If they’re worth of saving. If they knew how it ends for them, he thinks, would they do it differently?

He doesn’t think so.

***

He finds Merope in London in the end, but it’s too late. She’s weak and alone and barely alive. He watches her name the boy Tom - like his father - and Marvolo - like hers. Then, he watches her die.

***

He’s not sure what to do with himself after that. For a moment - a short one - he contemplates adopting Tom. It could work, Harry thinks. He stays around for a few days and watches the orphanage. He thinks about his own childhood and how he turned out not that bad. Would he be the same if he grew up where Tom did, he wonders.

***

In the end, he jumps again, not too far away.

He sees Tom murder his father, the Tom he remembers from Dumbledore’s memories. But he sees another Tom too, one Dumbledore never showed him - one maybe even Dumbledore didn’t know existed - Tom sitting next to his dead father’s corpse on the floor, biting down on his knuckles not to cry out.

It makes Harry want to cry too.

***

He tries over and over, always keeping safe distance.

He gets into Hogwarts and poisons pumpkin juice so Tom gets too sick to go after his father.

He kills the sleeping basilisk so Tom can never murder Moaning Myrtle.

He wipes Slughorn’s memory so Tom can never learn about horcruxes.

And yet, whenever he jumps forward, nothing seems changed.

His parents are still dead, just like Sirius and Remus and Colin. And Harry Potter is still missing.

***

“It should’ve been easier,” he says to himself.

It’s late. He’s tired.

He’s sitting by the lake, hidden. The wind feels cold on his face, but he doesn’t want to go, not yet.

For the last three days, he’s been trying to stop Tom from unleashing the basilisk. Killing the beast wasn’t enough. He tried to make it obey him, not Tom, but that was a failure too. He wasn’t the heir of Slytherin even partially now, was he?

The lake is so still he can count the stars on its surface rather than up in the sky. If he could, he’d stay here forever.

“Hermione always made it seem like meddling with time was dangerously easy,” he says. He knows he’s been talking to himself more and more lately and it scares him. He may be going mad at the long last.

But it’s true. He thought it’d be much easier to change what happened.

Now, the realization is slowly dawning on him. If he wants to change anything, it has to be done at his own cost. Maybe at Tom’s cost too. Maybe there’s no other way than to kill him early enough. 

The thought makes him shiver. 

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He thinks about the letters and how it all started. Clearly, there’s enough good in Tom to save him. To stop him.

“Oh,” he hears someone says in the stillness of the night suddenly.

Behind the trees, he sees a light.

“Sorry,” someone says. “I didn’t expect anyone here.”

He gets up, wand in his hand. His heart is beating fast. It’s hard to see who’s talking with the light right in front of his eyes.

“Sorry,” someone says again. The light dims slightly. “You’re not a student, are you?”

The light moves again and Harry sees the man at last. 

He looks much older than he sounds, Harry thinks. The thought seems bizarre. He’s wearing a long coat. It reminds Harry of military uniforms for some reason. He has a Gryffindor scarf too. Irrationally, it makes Harry a bit less suspicious.

“I’m afraid not,” he says in the end. “Just a passerby.”

“Like me,” the man says. 

“So you’re not a professor?” Harry says before he can bite his tongue.

“Just a passerby,” the man repeats after him, “visiting an old friend.”

They look at each other for a moment. Harry thinks he’s never seen that man before, not in any of Dumbledore’s memories. He’s not sure why it seems obvious this man is Dumbledore’s friend. Then, he thinks he should be feeling uncomfortable looking at him for so long, but he doesn’t.

“Never thought someone else knew this spot,” the man says suddenly, smiling. “But it’s been a while since I’ve studied here.” He sits down on the grass and after a moment of hesitation, Harry joins him. It’d probably be more suspicious if he ran away. “Foolish of me to think this place belongs to me.”

“If it makes you feel any better,” Harry says, “up until a minute ago I was sure it was mine too.”

“Time really is a funny thing, isn’t it,” the man says. “If you decided to get up three minutes earlier, we’d still be living so sure of ourselves.”

Harry’s not sure what to say. Maybe he doesn’t have to say anything.

They sit in silence. Harry’s surprised it doesn’t feel weird. He’s looking at the lake and the man is looking at the stars. Harry thinks about the future that won’t happen and if the Harry that won’t be him will know this spot too. If that other Harry will be anything like him. 

He thinks about his next step too. He thinks about Tom, sleeping somewhere in Slytherin dorm, unaware of his fate being decided here and now and by Harry himself. What else can he do to avoid doing the unforgivable?

He thinks about jumping on, to when the letters were written. Something happened then, something that could save Tom perhaps. Something that could stop the circle. Something that could change the future. Disrupt it and bend.

“This is not how time works,” Harry says after a while, more to himself than the man. “There has to be a beginning and an end. Past and future.”

“Future?” The man seems amused. “It already happened.”

Harry doesn’t understand.

The man must be able to read it on his face, because he says:

“Time is not a line.” He lifts his right hand and a golden string emerges from the tip of his finger. “It’s a maze.”

Before Harry’s eyes, the string tangles and then erupts in a hundred golden veins. It looks more like a spider’s web than a maze to him. There’s some logic to it, he thinks.

“So,” he says, looking at the web move, every corner turning into a crossing, “if someone was to change the past, it wouldn’t change the future?”

The man looks at him, a long, steady gaze. There’s something odd about him, Harry thinks, but he can’t really pinpoint it. He wouldn’t expect anything less from Dumbledore’s friend, he realizes.

“If someone was to change the past,“ the man says, “they’d create a new future. And to see it become reality, you have to let the future happen.”

Harry thinks about it for a while. The night is so silent he can hear the tiny waves crashing against the shore. He thinks about what he’s done and how nothing seemed to change in the future he already knew. He thinks about his first try and how he smiled at Merope, so sure that he’s won. Then, he thinks about her death and how cold that winter was.

“But,” Harry says, his voice loud in the darkness, “if it’s a maze, there’s no way back.”

“There wouldn’t be anyway,” the man says. “If it was a line, no change would be possible, because everything has happened already.”

“A circle,” Harry says. “With an outcome known to all.”

The man nods.

“But,” Harry says again, “what’s the point then? In meddling with time when you can't come back?”

The man keeps his eyes on the sky. 

“Looking back,” he says, “and seeing the whole world change.”

***

That night he thinks about the letters for a long time. He reads his notes too, taken in one of Hermione’s notebooks, and he’s so tired it all blurs. 

“It’s madness,” Harry tells himself, eyes barely open.

If the future has to happen, he thinks, and he might end up stuck in it for good, he could enjoy it at least. So he decides not to go back too far into the past. He’s not suited to  _ raise  _ Tom. But, he thinks, remembering the letters, he may be suited to befriend him. And make him come back to whoever was waiting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the response to chapter I! For obvious reason I can neither confirm nor deny your theories, but please keep them coming - I'm so curious of what you think will happen.
> 
> See you next Saturday and find me @ soughs.tumblr.com!


	3. Boo! Bitch!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still no dancing.

When he walks into Diagon Alley, Harry feels a few things at the same time.

First, there’s the overwhelming nostalgia. It feels as if it was only yesterday when Hagrid brought him here. He sees the shops he visited that day and feels what he felt then - that maybe, after years of being a misfit, he belongs at last.

Then, there’s the surprise. It’s early and the sky is a pale shade of blue, but he wasn’t expecting the street to be so quiet. There are not many people around - two witches whispering near the herbologist and a man trying to lift way too many boxes at once.

Harry thinks maybe it’s the war, but the war has ended a while ago.

Then, right when he’s about to decide what to do next, he hears a bang and then a scream.

Both the witches and him look where it came from and he notices first.

What was a tower of boxes a moment ago is now a huge mess. And at the very bottom of it, there is a man.

“No, no, no,” the man says when Harry tries to help him get up. “I’m fine. I’m absolutely fine.”

“I could-,” Harry says and then stops.

He knows that man.

For a moment it seems almost like a dream, because the face doesn’t match the eyes, but he remembers them so clearly he can’t be mistaken.

“Mr Ollivander,” he says before he can stop himself.

The man gives him a suspicious look.

“Do we know each other?,” he says. 

“No!,” Harry says and then adds almost immediately, “I mean… You don’t know me! But I certainly know you.”

Somehow this has an effect opposite to what Harry intended and Mr. Ollivander gives him another look. The witches standing near the herbologist must have stopped talking some time ago, because the whole street seems deadly quiet.

“Can I have you name?” Mr Ollivander says and Harry realizes he hasn’t even think about making one up in advance.

“I’m Harry,” he ends up saying. “Harry Potter.”

Oddly enough, this helps.

“Potter?” Mr Ollivander says, as if recognizing the name. “I thought you’d never come!”

“Oh?” is all Harry manages to say before Mr Ollivander goes on:

“I was expecting you last Friday,” he says, tidying up the boxes again. The pile looks dangerously unsteady again and Harry gets his wand out of his pocket to help. “After that good-for-nothing boy disappeared without a word right before the usual school chaos… You’d think it’d be easier to find an assistant now that everyone’s finally back, but no!”

Mr Ollivander looks at him from behind the tower of boxes, waiting for an answer, so Harry nods.

“Yes, it’s,” he starts, but it seems the nod was enough, because Mr Ollivander cuts him off:

“That’s what I’ve been saying.” They’re going through the door now and the tower turns into a long line, making Harry stay outside when Mr Ollivander goes in. He barely hears it when the man says, “Arthur- You know Arthur, right?” It doesn’t matter much, Harry thinks, because Mr Ollivander doesn’t wait for an answer this time. “He’s been making fun of me and my invisible employee already, but guess we’ll come out on top, right?

The boxes all fly into the shop at last and Harry goes in too. He’s been feeling more and more uncomfortable knowing the witches were still watching and he saw a few other people walk by. Did someone know he was coming? Who? And how? Unless there was some other Harry Potter in London in 1948, he’s been exposed. 

It takes a lot of his will not to look around suspiciously whenever someone passes by.

“But it’s all forgotten and forgiven now, isn’t it?” Mr Ollivander is saying now, the boxes flying between the long cabinets and disappearing somewhere at the back of the dimly lit shop. “I’ve heard you’re a good lad, even if not exactly a wandmaker yet. Can’t be too picky when we’ll have all these students coming in less than a month.”

So someone knew I was coming, Harry thinks. Someone knew and told Mr Ollivander and Merlin knows who else. Then, looking at Mr Ollivander - moving around so quickly he reminds Harry of some Muggle toy - followed by a long measuring tape, Harry thinks how unlike himself this man is. For a person who seemed so mysterious to him as a child and so quiet and broken later, Mr Ollivander sure is a chatterbox, Harry thinks. 

“He sent me a postcard from Charleston, would you believe that?” Mr Ollivander says and immediately a card appears in front of Harry’s eyes. It’s a Muggle one, with a pretty landscape and a few words on the back. It reads _ Had to go quickly. Sorry. _ And then a _ B. _“He sent a letter too, but it doesn’t make any sense,” Mr Ollivander says, then stops and looks at Harry, standing aimlessly in the middle of the shop. “Well, would you sort these? We’re opening in twenty minutes.”

Not sure what to say - it seems rude to decline when Mr Ollivander was apparently already waiting for him - Harry does what he’s asked for.

It takes him a moment to figure out the system Mr Ollivander is using, but once he understands it, the work goes on smoothly. Core, wood, length. It’s not that hard, Harry thinks.

“Can I ask you something?” He says after a while, spotting Mr Ollivander through a hole in a shelf. When the man nods, Harry says: “Why is it so quiet? The street?”

One of Mr Ollivander’s pale eyes looks at him through the hole. 

“New opening hours,” Mr Ollivander says. He’s very good at not blinking and it makes Harry feel observed. “Wizards of Trade against all.”

“All?” Harry says. “Sounds a bit extreme to me.”

The eye looks at him with some suspicion again.

“ALL, Act of Lifelong Labour,” Mr Ollivander says. “You were travelling abroad, weren’t you?” He asks. 

Harry nods, maybe a bit too vigorously. 

“Balkans, mostly,” he says. “Looks like I’ve missed a few affairs.”

The eye looks at him for a moment before Mr Ollivander dives deep into explaining the nuances of wizarding law.

***

It’s late evening when he ends up at the Leaky Cauldron at last, too tired to think of the situation he’s gotten himself into. Yes, he wanted to find a job eventually - to let future happen - but not so unexpectedly and without a bed to sleep in first. He’s not even sure if Tom is anywhere near and finding him - not becoming a wand maker - is the sole purpose of his reckless time travel.

He orders a bowl of soup and eats it at the bar. The room is full but Harry doesn’t recognize a single person. Even the barman is a new face and Harry realizes many years still have to pass before the one he knows from his old life starts working here.

Next to him, a wizard with an eye-patch is reading The Daily Prophet. Harry thinks that once he finds a room, he should probably read the few latest ones to catch up. After spending a day with Mr Ollivander he knows his basic - or rather non-existent - knowledge of history may not be enough to make the man - or anyone else - believe.

He asks the barman if they have any spare beds. His eyes are getting heavy and all he dreams of after the warm soup is a warm bath and a warm bed. 

“Looking for a room?” Harry hears someone say.

The wizard with an eye-patch has turned to him and must’ve listened.

Harry nods.

“I have one,” the man says. The eye he keeps in view is brown and twitching nervously. “Unexpectedly.”

Harry thinks this may be one coincidence too much for a day. But his brain and body are too tired to think about it now, so he nods and listens.

“A room above the bookshop,” the man says. “Bath and kitchen shared.”

Flatmate, Harry thinks. A little bit like Hogwarts, but he doesn’t say it aloud. It sounds ridiculous even in his own head and he wants to seem responsible enough to get that room.

He gives the man another careful look. The eye-patch makes him look a bit dangerous, but it reminds him of Mad-Eye Moody in an odd way too. He hasn’t thought about Moody in a while.

“How much,” he says.

The man smiles. Only one side of his face moves.

***

It takes him close to an hour to find the right door and once the key fits at last, Harry feels exhausted enough to fall asleep on the stairs leading up to his new place.

The corridor is narrow and the stairs are old and crackle under Harry’s feet. There’s a set of door on the second floor - numbers 3 to 7 - and an old dirty painting of four wizards playing chess. One of them has ginger hair and Harry thinks about Ron. They all give Harry a look but none speaks. When Harry passes by, he hears them whisper. Their voices sound surprised but Harry can’t catch a single word.

The last few steps seem to take him forever, but then he sees it at last - numbers 1 and 2, the small kitchenette between them and the third door which must lead to the shared bathroom. There’s a round window right above the kitchen sink and Harry catches last rays of sun. They make the white walls look gold. 

On the round table, there’s an open book. It has notes scribbled all over it. Right next, Harry sees a half-empty cup. His flatmate must’ve gone out in a hurry.

This time he knows which door to open - number 2 - and the key goes in smoothly.

The place is not much, but he used to have even less, Harry thinks.

There’s enough space to unpack his books and the little clothes he took. Maybe, he thinks, this’ll make him a more believable wandmaker apprentice. He puts his own cup in the kitchen cupboard and makes a mental note to get up early and go grocery shopping in the morning. And maybe get an extra blanket.

He gets the old photo-book out - his most precious possession right now, Harry thinks - and finds a picture of his parents’ wedding and a few others - one with Ron and Hermione in the Burrow’s garden, another one with Fleur, Victor and Cedric. He looks happy and relaxed in the first one but extremely uncomfortable in the other. He sticks the photos to the wall with a spell he hasn’t learned at school and kicks off his shoes at last. 

Most importantly, there’s a bed. It’s not exactly the softest he’s slept in and far smaller than the one he had in Gryffindor tower, but when he positions his body in a certain way with his head on the side, he can see a bit of the evening sky. 

He takes four breaths in, then out. On the fifth, his thoughts are a bit clearer again.

Did someone know he was coming, Harry wonders. Is someone following him or maybe even knows his goals? It seems impossible; he himself isn’t so sure what exactly is about to happen next. 

Mr Ollivander’s assistant disappeared, he thinks. And so did the person who used to live here. 

“Is it too much of a coincidence,” he asks himself.

There is no answer

For now, he thinks, it’s safest to play it cool. If someone is after him, he’ll have to wait for them to come forward and keep his guard up in the meantime, looking for Tom.

Tom.

Suddenly the name sounds as soft in his head as it reads in the letters. Harry’s not sure what to do with it. He’s too tired to think about them tonight and figure out what to do next. Tomorrow, Harry thinks, he’ll deal with it tomorrow. There’s time.

He closes his eyes, but his mind is buzzing, like there’s a tiny fly inside his skull.

So he opens his eyes again and looks at the ceiling aimlessly. His feet hurt from standing up all day.

Then, right when he thinks he’s about to fall asleep for real, someone walks up the stairs.

“Oh God,” he hears someone say. The voice sounds familiar, but he can’t quite place it. “This is so annoying.”

He turns to the other side and moves his hand to open the door a bit more. All the sleep, so close a moment ago, has left him completely.

First, he sees a pair of black shoes. They’re shiny but not new, he thinks. Then, two bony ankles, the grey pants are just an inch too short. Then, a sack of potatoes flies in front of long legs, followed by a coat. The legs turn, the shoes click. 

Harry leans on his right elbow to get a better view.

Have I seen him today, he wonders, because the man seems familiar. He’s seen that head before for sure.

The coats hangs itself on the chair and the potatoes hide in the cupboard in the corner. Harry tries to lean even closer without falling off his narrow bed.

Then, the man turns again.

Their eyes meet.

It takes Harry an awfully long moment to remember to take another breath in and to close his mouth.

In their shared kitchen, he sees Tom Riddle.  


***

To his own surprise, Harry sleeps well. When he wakes up, Tom is gone already.

There is no book on the table and the cup is empty and clean. In the bathroom, Harry sees two white towels and hangs his own two next to them. 

He looks at himself in the round mirror and realizes it’s been a while since he last had a chance to do so. His eyes are sleepy and his skin looks sickly. His face seems a bit too skinny and Harry realizes he’s not even sure how much time did it take him to get where he is now. A week? A month? Maybe a year if he’d sum it up?

Dressing up, he thinks about going back to bed, and drinking coffee he thinks how terribly fortunate he is. Tom, in the same flat. Tom, his neighbour. It’s so funny he has to put his cup down for a moment so he doesn’t spill hot coffee all over his shirt.

The possibilities are endless, Harry thinks. He can observe and learn. Follow Tom wherever he goes. Listen to him. 

It feels a bit like being a special agent.

The bed is calling him on his way downstairs, but Mr Ollivander wanted him at the shop before ten and he still has something to do.

The street is quiet again. He sees a few wizards discussing something near the Leaky Cauldron and again that pair of witches waiting by the herbologist.

But at the bank, Harry sees a small crowd.

There are people coming in and out already and Harry barely has time to read the warning at the front door, the same one which sounded so fantastical during his first visit and not so unbelievable when he was escaping Gringotts on a dragon’s back.

The memory makes him shiver. He wonders if the dragon is underground already. He still doesn’t know how long dragons live.

“Hello,” he says when he stands at the high desk. “I’d like to-”

The goblin gives him such a cold look words die in Harry’s throat.

“Number,” the goblin says.

Harry blinks.

“Number?” He repeats and he knows he sounds pretty dumb.

“Yes, number.” The goblin seems annoyed with him already. “From the front desk. Queue number.”

Harry looks back. He hasn’t noticed before but there is a desk right at the door indeed, a goblin and a fancy machine. He sees someone walk up to the desk and after a moment of wait and some smoke and screeching coming from within the machine, the goblin produces a piece of parchment with a number.

Harry looks around. There are far many more bored goblins at their desks than there are wizards waiting for queue numbers.

“Is it really necessary,” Harry says. “You don’t look too busy.”

This time the goblin gives him a look so freezing Harry thinks his blood may turn to ice.

“No number, no service,” the goblin says and then turns his back to Harry.

“It’s a new system,” he hears someone say. “Goblins against all.”

“Them too?” He says before he can bite his tongue.

The girl laughs. She’s wearing a checkered coat and a Gryffindor scarf. Harry knows it’s irrational, but he likes her already.

“I’ve come back last week and they still surprise me too,” she says. She shows him where to get a ticket. Then, she offers Harry a hand. “Minerva McGonagall. And you are?”

“Harry,” he says, not sure what he’s feeling. “Harry Potter.”

Her handshake is strong and certain, exactly what he’d expect it to be.

Harry gets his number and they stand in the queue. It got a bit longer while Harry tried to discuss with the goblin.

“Nice to meet you, Harry.” She doesn’t look like herself at all when she smiles, Harry thinks. “You’re not working at the ministry, are you?”

“I’m afraid not,” he says. “I’m Mr Ollivander’s assistant.”

“Oh,” she says. “A wandmaker?”

“Since yesterday,” he smiles. “It happened rather unexpectedly.”

“I wish something unexpected could happen to me too,” she says. “The ministry is rather dull, not to mention some people are simply extremely annoying.”

Harry can’t help laughing. Professor McGonagall - Minerva - covers her mouth with her hand.

“Sorry,” she says, voiced hushed. “I have no idea why I said it.”

“No worries,” Harry says. “Never been a fan of the Ministry myself.”

“Some of them are really that bad,” she says, looking around, as if she’s expecting someone to be spying on her. “You’d think now that the war has ended at last they’d stop with the Mugglephobia-”

She stops again. Harry looks at her carefully.

“My best friends’ parents are dentists,” he says. She’s clearly measuring his words. “My mother was Muggle-born.”

“So people like you exist,” she says, moving a bit with the queue. “People like me,” she adds after a moment. “It’s hard to believe I’m not the only one sometimes.” She takes a deep breath and her shoulders move up and down. “If only I could do something about it.”

“I’m sure there is something,” Harry says. “And sometimes,” he says, “it’s enough to be brave and believe that what you’re doing is right.”

“Pretty words,” she says. “But are words enough?”

Harry wants to say that yes, sometimes words are enough and sometimes a few good words are all that is needed, but then he realizes Minerva is already first in the queue and saying _ see you around _. Then, a goblin speaks to him:

“How can I help you?”

Harry thinks he doesn’t sound like he wants to help him at all, but he says:

“I’d like to set up a vault.”

There are some questions and then a lot of paperwork. He feels interrogated by the senior goblin assigned to him, but does everything he’s asked to.

Then, they ask him for his wand.

Then, something goes wrong.

He can see it by the look on the goblin’s face before he even turns to Harry again.

“Is this a joke?” The goblin says.

“Is something wrong?” Harry asks instead of answering.

“This wand is already assigned to a vault,” the goblin says. “So either you stole it and are the worst thief alive or you’re one of these kids who like wasting others’ time.”

“I’m not a thief,” he says quickly and a bit too loud. A few people and goblins turn their heads towards him to listen. “I’m not a thief,” he says, this time not so loud. “It has to be a mistake.”

The goblin looks offended now.

“There are no mistakes at Gringotts,” he says.

Harry doesn’t know what to say to this. The goblin is quiet for a moment too, as if thinking the whole thing through again.

“I know what we’ll do,” he says in the end. “Yes, I know what we should do.”

“And what is that?” Harry says, but the goblin ignores him.

“Come along,” he says instead, still holding Harry’s wand, and Harry has to follow.

They go through the second heavy door and then down some stairs. Harry knows it’s the way to the underground passage and soon he sees a cart. 

“Take a seat,” the goblin says. 

Harry thinks that he doesn’t like the way the goblin is smiling to himself, as if all this is a great joke Harry doesn’t understand.

They ride for so long Harry loses sense of time. Wherever they’re going, it’s deep, deeper than his old vault was. Maybe he’s taking me to the dragon, Harry thinks, and his brain starts working out ways to run away. It’d be a shame, really, he thinks, especially after he managed to find Tom so easily.

When they stop and the goblin light a few candles above their heads, Harry sees the numbers.

710, 711, 712, 713.

He feels his heart skip a beat.

Why are we here, he wants to ask, but his voice gets stuck in his throat.

They walk by 710 and 711. Then, the goblin stops.

“The owner gave us some peculiar instructions,” he says. “We offered other means of security, like in 713.” The candles swirl above the door and Harry sees the number clearly. “Your hand, please.”

Harry doesn’t know what to expect, but he gives his hand freely.

Then, he hisses. It stings. 

“You see,” the goblin says, putting Harry’s palm to the door, “blood is a poor key. It can be taken away from you.”

They stand in front of the door for a moment. Harry thinks it won’t open and then, surely, the goblin will leave him there to die. 

Then, he feels the metal under his palm move.

Slowly, the door open.

“Oh,” the goblin says, sounding disappointed, “so it is you,” but Harry doesn’t listen.

For a moment he thinks he’s gone blind. The light is so sudden and bright he has to cover his eyes. He’s never seen so much gold, not in his old vault, not even in Bellatrix’s vault. He blinks a few times. 

He walks in and he sees more - jewels and gems and silvers, books and painting and mirrors. Then, in the middle of it all, he sees a small package. 

He thinks he’s seen it before, though he’s not sure when.

Then, he sees the envelope on the top. It says simply _ Tom _.

  


***

“They’re protesting too,” Mr Ollivander says, but Harry can hardly focus on his words. “They say they shouldn’t be affected by ALL because they’re not treated like wizards in any other case. Which,” Mr Ollivander says, “makes sense to me.”

Harry looks at the twigs in his hands. There’s a bit of bandage on his left forefinger to make sure he doesn’t put his blood anywhere near Mr Ollivander’s precious work.

“Arthur says they could use this as a chance to challenge the status quo,” Harry hears somewhere behind the shelves, “but he’s a radical.”

Harry can’t help smiling, even though his mind is racing. 

He’s met Arthur, the herbologist, already, and decided Mr Ollivander would call anyone more eccentric than himself a radical. He’d probably call Harry that if he knew what was going on in his head.

He tries to focus on his work. Being Mr Ollivander’s assistant definitely makes blending in easier and in the long run makes his presence in 1948 much less suspicious, but he knows nothing about wandmaking and his single use of Elder Wand to repair his old one doesn’t exactly count as job experience.

He’s surprised that it’s all done by hand, the woodwork. His hands aren’t used to it and after two hours he knows he will never like oak wood. But there’s something calming about it too and something like a fight. Mr Ollivander told him it’ll take months before he lets Harry as much as touch the cores, let alone combine them with anything, but Harry decides he doesn’t mind for now.

He sits in the back and works on the twigs. Sometimes he can hear Mr Ollivander talk to the customers. It’s the middle of July and Mr Ollivander says a lot of students will be coming to get their first wands soon. Harry wonders who else is buying wands and when he asks, Mr Ollivander says:

“It’s not all about buying wands. We do repairs too.”

He shows Harry another room, smaller and darker. 

“There are no windows,” Harry says, surprised.

“We used to have one, right here,” he shows Harry a few new bricks in the wall, “but repairing it five times a day gets old pretty quickly.”

Not all wands in the second room look broken, but when Harry tries to touch one of them, Mr Ollivander shushes him out.

“Don’t want you to lose an eye on your second day,” he says, making Harry carve another twig. “Learn how to build them first. Destroying comes after.”

Harry thinks he’d love more things to work so simply.

***

Every morning when he wakes up, Tom is already gone. Harry’s not sure how early he gets up, but by seven there is no sign of him. He doesn’t know exactly what Tom is doing out so early and according to Mr Ollivander Knockturn Alley shops don’t open before nine. It’s all a mystery and Harry isn’t sure what to do with it.

Some days Tom leaves the half empty cup on the table, but by the time Harry is back in the afternoon, the cup is gone and so is Tom. He’s clearly going some places, but it’s still too early for Harry to know where. 

At night, he hears Tom’s steps on the stairs, even though he seems to be trying to be as quiet as possible. Harry listens to him take off his shoes and then the water running next door. One door opens, then closes. Then Tom pours himself a glass of water and disappears in his room.

***

It’s a Tuesday two weeks later when Harry wakes up much earlier than usual.

He hears Tom in the bathroom and decides to make a move at last. It’s been long enough and even though he has some power over it he feels as if time is not working in his favour.

In the kitchen, Harry sees a book on the table again. He gives it a short glance - it’s _ Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego _.

Freud, Harry reads and can’t help feeling surprised. A Muggle book. Is this why Tom keeps it in his room at all times? So Harry doesn’t know?

Then, he realizes Tom must be already working on his big plan, whatever that plan is right now. Taking control over the world or something equally vague. He doesn’t know yet, Harry thinks, doesn’t know about the prophecy or anything that comes after.

_ Group Psychology _. Death Eaters.

Harry realizes he always thought it was natural for Tom to lead others, but maybe he’s been wrong all this time. Or maybe Tom was simply that meticulous about everything he puts his mind to.

The water is still running and Harry makes himself a cup of tea and then, after a moment of thought, a cup of coffee for Tom. 

When the water stops, he’s sitting at the table with yesterday’s newspaper and a letter from Minerva, and when the bathroom door opens, he’s about to take the first sip of his tea.

He looks up. Tom hasn’t noticed him yet.

Then Tom turns and Harry coughs because he realizes, way too late, that Tom is wearing nothing but a towel around his hips. The hot tea makes him cough more and then their eyes meet.

Harry is about to cry because his throat is burning and Tom is looking at him with surprise, as if he still hasn’t noticed he has a flatmate. Then he too realizes he’s not wearing much and his eyes start searching for an easy escape route.

Harry feels his ears turn red. Tom’s are too, just like his arms. Harry tries not to look anywhere else.

“I’m sorry,” he manages to say when he stops coughing at last. “I’ve made you some coffee.”

It’s sounds like an extremely poor excuse, he thinks.

“Thank you,” Harry hears Tom say somewhere close, but he keeps looking at his own hands on the table. “Would you mind if I dressed up first?”

“What? No,” Harry says, but he feels weird. Tom doesn’t sound mad. He’s not sure why he expected him to, but he knows he did. “I’m,” he says, but Tom’s already managed to hide in his room, “not going anywhere.”

He looks at the newspaper and the tea and then at Tom’s coffee and book on the other side of the small table. What was he expecting and why not this?

He doesn’t have much time to think, because Tom emerges from behind the door again, this time dressed up and Harry finally has a chance to look at him properly.

He’s wearing black on black and Harry can’t help wondering if that’s what he was wearing when he was looking for Harry for the first time, at his parents’ house. His robes look clean, but they’re not new for sure, just like his shoes. In thirty years he’ll be richer perhaps, Harry thinks. He never thought about this much, he realizes. In the memories, it was never important. Now, it makes him almost depressed to see Tom in old clothes, living in this excuse of a flat. For him, it’s a choice, but for Tom - the only option.

He doesn’t look healthy either and Harry wonders if it’s the horcruxes. How much of his soul is there left in him? A quarter? Even less maybe?

_ Seven is the most powerful number, _ he hears somewhere in his head, but the Tom standing in front of him doesn’t look much like the Tom from Hogwarts.

He’s taller and paler and thinner. Harry thinks he can almost see through him. 

“I’m running late,” he hears Tom say now. His voice is quiet, but every word pierces right through Harry. They’re talking. It’s more surreal than he thought it would be. “Thank you for the coffee. And sorry for,” his voice wavers off. He looks at his shoes.

“No,” Harry says. “I’m sorry. For,” he’s not sure what to say either, “walking on you like that.”

He tries to give Tom a smile, but Tom just look at him. His eyes seem endless. Harry feels like falling.

“I didn’t expect you up so early,” Tom says and the odd feeling passes. “You don’t seem like an early bird.”

“I,” Harry says, suddenly realizing he wasn’t the only one observing, “I thought it’d be nice to introduce myself. It’s hard to catch you.”

He’s good at not blinking very often, just like Mr Ollivander, Harry thinks, but then Tom blinks. His eyelashes are long and dark against his skin.

“I’m Harry,” he says. “Harry Potter.”

He offers Tom his hand and he’s not sure if it’s only his imagination or maybe it’s happening, but it takes Tom a bit too long to take it and say:

“Tom Riddle.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading and see you next Saturday!


	4. Table for two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week's chapter is the one that inspired [my tomarrybigbang partner](https://aquacatz11.tumblr.com/). You can find the art [here](https://aquacatz11.tumblr.com/post/187779185202/my-art-for-soughs-fic-dance-for-me-tom-thank), please give the artist lots of love! ♥

After an unbearably hot week, the weather breaks at last. Harry’s sitting behind the counter and watching the rain. He can hear the sound of thunder every now and then.

Mr Ollivander has hidden in the workshop some time ago and without his constant chatter Harry feels like he may fall asleep any minute. The steady beat of raindrops against the window lulls him.

It’s Friday and there’s not much to do for him when Mr Ollivander is working in the back and doesn’t want to be interrupted. He’s read the newspaper and the note from Minerva and then wrote her back. What’s left are his thoughts about Tom but it feels like these require some more energy.

The only constant in his half-wake brain is the grey of Tom’s eyes and the sound of his voice saying _ thank you_. He doesn’t seem much like himself, Harry thinks, but then again, did he ever really know Tom? He thought he knew him better than anyone else - better than Dumbledore - but how much does he really know? That Tom grew up in an orphanage and that his mother died, that he hated his father and that he killed Moaning Myrtle, that he was so afraid of death he went after a toddler.

If this whole thing has any chance of working out, Harry thinks, he’ll have to get to know Tom anew.

It doesn’t seem like that bad of an idea and it terrifies him.

He hears the door open.

“How can I help you,” he says, standing up, but then forgets to close his mouth and just stares,

In the middle of the shop, he sees Albus Dumbledore.

“Professor,” he says.

Then, he remembers this Albus Dumbledore has never met him.

Dumbledore gives him one of his long, curious looks. He’s wearing robes the colour of wine.

“Could you please get Mr Ollivander for me?” He asks. 

Harry nods and runs. He stumbles upon a box of carved twigs from the other day and almost falls. Even though he’s hidden behind the shelves, he feels Dumbledore’s eyes on him. He knows it’s ridiculous, but he can’t help it.

When he’s back with Mr Ollivander, he sees the measuring tape has come to life and started flying all around Dumbledore, checking the length of his beard. Harry can’t make it stop, but Dumbledore doesn’t seem to mind. 

Harry thinks he knows better now than to believe his serene smile.

“Professor,” Mr Ollivander says and Harry wonders if Dumbledore taught him too. “What a surprise.”

“A pleasant one, I hope,” Dumbledore says. The tape is measuring his ears now.

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

Harry stands behind the counter again and observes.

“Not much, Garrick,” he hears Dumbledore say and remembers Garrick is Mr Ollivander’s name. “I suppose I’m simply looking… for a second opinion.”

Dumbledore stops. He looks at Harry. Mr Ollivander looks at him too and then says:

“No need to worry. It’s my new apprentice.”

“Really?” Dumbledore says. His blue eyes are still on Harry. Then, he looks at Mr Ollivander again. Harry sees there’s a long package in Dumbledore’s hands. “Please, be careful with it.”

“So it’s true,” Mr Ollivader says. 

He’s not looking at neither Dumbledore nor Harry anymore, focused solely on the box. 

“I’m afraid it is,” Dumbledore says. There’s something like a sigh about the way he says it, Harry thinks. Sadness maybe. “I thought you may want to take a look.”

“Of course,” Mr Ollivander says. Harry thinks he’s never heard him so enthusiastic about anything, not even Wizards of Trade against Act of Lifelong Labour. “Can I,” he says, looking up.

“I’ll be back in London next week,” Dumbledore says. 

Mr Ollivander smiles as if Christmas came five months too early.

“I should start immediately,” he says and before Harry can do anything, he’s already between the shelves on his way back to the workshop.

“Please, be careful with it,” Dumbledore says again to Mr Ollivander’s back, but there's no response.

Then, Dumbledore looks at Harry one more time.

“I don’t believe we have met before, Mr …?”

“Potter,” he says, feeling his heart in his throat. “Harry Potter.”

Dumbledore keeps looking at him and Harry feels uncomfortable. 

“It’s one of the Hallows, right,” Harry says, hoping the words will disturb the odd silence around them, but Dumbledore only says:

“One of the Hallows. Interesting that’s the name you used for it.”

“Why?” Harry can’t help asking.

“There are only two people that come to my mind that’d call it a Hallow,” Dumbledore says. “Did you study at Hogwarts, Harry?” He asks suddenly.

“Not really,” Harry says.

Technically, not a lie yet. Not the truth either.

“Yet you called me a professor,” Dumbledore says. His voice has changed. For some reason it reminds Harry about the time he attacked Mr Weasley in a dream and Dumbledore sent them all to Grimauld’s Place. He’s intimidating now.

“Everyone knows who you are,” Harry says.

Dumbledore doesn’t catch the bait. Harry thinks he didn’t really expect him to.

“That scar of yours,” Dumbledore says. “A spell?”

Harry thinks it feels like a game of chess for some reason. Ron would be much better at it.

“A bad one, yes,” he says. “When I was a kid.”

They look at each other for a long moment. 

Then, Dumbledore smiles. It’s so odd Harry can’t hide how surprised he is and makes a face.

“So how’s working with Garrick?” Dumbledore says now and Harry feels too dumbfounded not to answer. 

“I’m learning,” he says. “Mr Ollivander is different than I imagined.”

Another curious look. Harry thinks he’s really bad at this and it’s a miracle no one’s realized that he’s not like everyone else yet.

“You must’ve excelled in herbology,” he hears Dumbledore say. He’s walking towards the shelves now, seemingly aimlessly.

“Not really,” Harry says, already quite annoyed. He doesn’t like how it feels, being on the other side of Dumbledore’s imaginary chessboard. “Professor Sprout thought I only exceeded expectations.”

“So you took your owls?” Dumbledore says, sharp like a knife and Harry has to bite his tongue so he doesn’t curse out loud.

Why did he get caught so easily? Why did he have to be so dumb, especially around Dumbledore?

“Yes,” he says through his teeth. “By mail.”

“Interesting,” Dumblefore says, but then falls silent for a while. He just keeps walking around the shop.

Harry is so angry with himself he wants to scream. 

“And how do you like London? Living with your family?”

Dumbledore emerges from an alley right next to the front desk so unexpectedly he catches Harry looking like he’s about to throw a curse at someone.

“Oh, no,” Harry says. “I’m renting a room nearby. With Tom Riddle.”

He’s not sure why he says all this. It’s so hard to remember this man doesn’t know him.

“Tom Riddle?” Again, Dumbledore’s voice changes. Now, he’s clearly surprised. “You know Tom?”

“We share a bathroom and a kitchen,” Harry can’t help giving Dumbledore a crooked smile. “We spoke once.”

“Is he,” Dumbledore starts, but decides against whatever he wanted to say in the end. “I’m glad he has company.”

Why is he like this, Harry wonders.

He almost asks the question aloud, but then the bell above the door rings. A witch and a short boy walk in. Dumbledore takes his chance and walks out.

Harry looks at him until he disappears in the heavy rain.

***

“You live with Tom Riddle?”

Harry nods. Minerva gives him a look saying she’d be less surprised if he told her he had a second face hidden at the back of his head.

“You’re the second person within twenty-four hours that seems terribly surprised by it,” he says, pouring himself more tea. They’re sitting in one of the small cafes at the end of Diagon Alley and Harry’s enjoying his second piece of apple pie.

It still feels a bit weird, sitting across his teacher who’s not even a teacher yet, and talk about Tom Riddle who’s not the Tom Riddle they’ll know later on. The pie is tasty though and the tea is hot and sweet, so Harry decides he may trade his sanity for it.

“He’s always been so… weird,” Minerva says, but it sounds as if she’d rather use a different word. She’s wearing another checkered robe today. Her Gryffindor scarf is hanging from the back of her chair. “You know, there are these kids who seem weird but once you talk to them a few times, they turn out okay and he… I don’t know, he just never seemed interested in talking.”

She takes a bite of her strawberry cheesecake.

“And of course there was that time,” she says. Then, she stops.

“That time?” Harry says. He’s curious now.

“It’s so stupid,” she says. “Really stupid. A gossip probably.”

“Gossip?”

She looks at him for a moment, as if trying to decide if he’s worthy of hearing the story. She takes a deep breath.

“It was our second to last year at school,” she says in the end. “The war was in full blast by that time and many of the students didn’t come to Hogwarts at all. The few who did probably felt safer there than they would at home.”

She stops and takes another deep breath. Harry can see her fingers move nervously around her cup.

“But the school wasn’t safe,” she says. She’s no longer looking at him, Harry realizes. She’s looking somewhere above his left arm, in the distance. “Sometime between October and March something was… awakened in the school. We never found out what it was and it stopped as suddenly as it began, but,” she stops. “Even the teacher seemed terrified. We had curfews and corridors patrols and still so many students were attacked.

“There was a pattern, we’ve realized soon,” she says. “Only Muggle-born students were in danger. It was the only time I felt as if Hogwarts was at war too.”

“But what about Tom?” Harry says, even though he’s pretty sure knows where Minerva is going.

She blinks and looks at him again. Her eyes seem distant.

“Oh, Tom,” she says, as if remembering the point of the story. “He walked around the school like a prince. Yes,” she says. “He seemed like someone different from all of us back then more than ever.”

A waitress comes by and takes their empty plates, asking if they want something else. Harry orders another pot of tea. Minerva asks for a chocolate cookie.

“We never knew who his parents were, you know,” she says. “I’m not even sure if he knew. But back then he carried himself as if his blood was as pure as Slytherin’s.”

Harry tries not to choke on his tea. He keeps his eyes on Minerva.

“So of course,” she says, looking down on her hands. “It sounds stupid now, but back then we thought… I suppose it helped us deal with what was going on.”

Harry waits patiently for more. It seems the memories are coming back with a good deal of pain too.

“I don’t even know who said it first,” she says. “But before we realized, everyone was sure Tom Riddle was the heir of Slytherin. That he opened the Chamber of Secrets.”

Minerva looks up as if she’s expecting Harry to laugh at her.

When he doesn’t, she says:

“I’d be lying if I said we didn’t believe it. Especially in Gryffindor. Augusta Longbottom was taking bets, could you believe?”

Harry thinks he could, but he doesn’t say it. In this world, he has no idea who Augusta Longbottom is.

“Do you think he liked it?” He says instead. “Being feared?”

“Oh,” she says. “I don’t know about being feared, but he hated the attention for sure.”

“Oh,” Harry says. He’s not sure why he’s so surprised.

“I can still remember that fool Abraxas Malfoy running around him like a tiny dog, proclaiming Tom’s arrival as if he was some kind of lord.” Minerva’s smiling now. “One time Tom zipped his mouth with a spell and refused to take it off for a week.”

Harry smiles too. It’s so weird, this Tom he never knew. Tom the student. Tom from the diary, he thinks. He remembers how Tom tried to make him believe it was Hagrid who released the monster. Of course, he wouldn’t want anyone to know it was him. The heir of Slytherin, Harry thinks. Prince without a crown.

“When it all ended,” Minerva says. “Did you hear what… ?”

“Yes,” he says. “I’ve heard.”

From the very source, he thinks. Both the murdered and the victim.

“The week she died,” Minerva says, but then changes her mind. “It’s so stupid.”

“What?”

“Promise you won’t tell anyone,” she says. She sounds firm, as if it’s a matter of great importance. 

Harry nods. Whatever it is, he wants to know.

“The week that girl died, right before they told us the school might get closed,” she says and stops again. She looks at Harry and he can swear her ears are turning red. “It’s really dumb and I’m not proud of it, but,” she takes a deep breath, “I was- Augusta told me I’m too much of a chicken to go there so I went to that damned bathroom,” she says it so quickly Harry barely makes out the words. “That’s where I saw him,” she says, visibly relieved with being over with the worst part. “Tom. In girls’ bathroom,” she makes it sound like a much worse crime than it is, Harry thinks. “And he was- I never told Augusta or anyone else, because I didn’t think it mattered back then, but he was talking. I thought that maybe he was talking to himself or that someone else was there, but I couldn’t understand a word. So I came back to my bedroom and showed Augusta how wet my shoes were and she seemed sorry for being so mean to me, but,” she stops again. Harry realizes his tea must be cold by now. “You see, it wouldn’t give me peace. So I went to the library and started looking and-”

“And?” Harry says, wondering how much she knows.

“It took some time, but I thought… Well, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to check.”

She makes a face and in that moment she reminds Harry of Hermione so much it hurts.

“Everyone knows Slytherin was Parseltongue and some people believe he left a monster at the school,” she’s talking as if she’s giving a lecture, Harry thinks. “Apart from Myrtle Warren all the other students were petrified. So I asked myself - what kind of beast would listen to Parseltongue and be able to petrify its prey? And I thought-”

“A basilisk,” Harry says. 

She looks at him with disbelief, but then she smiles.

“Yes, a basilisk,” she says. “But then I thought - how would a beast like that go unnoticed in a school full of people?”

Harry feels like he’s in a detective movie and Miverva’s about to reveal the main suspect is in fact innocent and all the blame should be put on his twin brother who everyone presumed dead for years.

“How?” He asks, even though he knows the answer already.

“Pipes,” she says, with the sort of triumph Harry imagines Hermione would if the basilisk didn’t get her. “It hides in pipes.”

“That’s why Tom was in the bathroom that day,” he says, trying to sound amazed. “That’s why the girl died there.”

“I know it sounds crazy,” she says. She’s looking at him as if waiting for confirmation. Maybe it helps her sleep at night, believing it can’t be true.

So Harry smiles and says:

“It really does, dear Watson.”

***

When Harry comes back to the tiny flat, carrying a bag of groceries, Tom’s not there.

Harry’s not surprised. On Fridays, Tom tends to disappear for long hours.

Harry has been hoping Tom would be gone tonight.

He takes off his shoes and makes a cup of tea, leaving it on the kitchen table. He places a newspaper right next to it, open somewhere in the middle. He catches the header -_ Should we rise the ban on pet acromantulas? _ \- and the picture of a skinny tall man with a gigantic spider in his lap. He thinks Hagrid would like that for sure.

Then, when everything is ready, he knocks on Tom’s door.

No one answers, just like he’s hoped.

He doesn’t want to touch the doorknob, so he uses his wand. To his surprise, it gives way easily.

No spells, he thinks, and it makes him even more careful. The Tom he knows wouldn’t be so careless with his possessions. 

There are not many of them, Harry has to admit, and the room, a bit bigger than his own, looks almost empty. A bed, white sheets, a desk and a chair, a drawer. He’s not sure if he can touch anything without being discovered later.

There are books on the desk and some on a small shelf next to the window. 

“The Count of Monte Cristo,” Harry reads. 

Another Muggle book, he thinks, but he can’t imagine how a book like this could be useful for someone like Tom. He recognizes a few more titles - _Portrait of Dorian Grey_ and _Crime and punishment_ \- but other than the books, there’s not much there.

He looks at the desk again. There’s a quill and some empty parchment rolls. 

Harry’s itching to open the drawers but something tells him it’s a bad idea.

It’s awful enough to be going through someone else’s belongings without permission, he thinks. Then again, his goal requires some sacrifices and these seem to include his decency. 

“Jesus,” he says. He’s getting nervous and his heart is beating faster now.

He scans the room with a few spells, but doesn’t find anything suspicious. If Tom’s hiding something in this room, he’s doing it well enough to fool a trained auror, Harry thinks.

He’s about to walk out when something catches his eyes. Under the pillow, he sees something. For a moment he’s almost sure it’s another book, but when he takes a step closer, he realizes how wrong he is.

“The diary,” he says. He’s whispering even though he’s alone.

Maybe he’s not really alone, he thinks.

The battle is on again, to touch it or not. He’s not sure why he wants to do it so badly - maybe because he hasn’t found anything else that could help him figure out this Tom. Or maybe because he’s curious. 

Fuck it, he thinks and grabs the leather-clad journal.

He realizes he doesn’t even have a pen to write anything down in it.

He goes to his own room and prays for Tom not to come back unexpectedly. He has no idea how exactly would he explain this.

When he has his quill and ink, he’s suddenly not sure what to do next.

He ends up sitting at the kitchen table. It seems like a choice safer than both his and Tom’s rooms. He takes a sip of his tea, but it doesn’t make him feel any better. The acromantula in the picture tries to hide behind the tall man who was holding it.

Then, he opens the diary.

It’s empty, just like he remembers. No dates, no notes. 

Just secrets, Harry thinks.

He’s not sure what to write. Suddenly he feels extremely stupid.

He still remembers what he wrote the first time around.

_ My name is Harry Potter _, he writes.

For a terribly long moment, he’s sure the ink won’t disappear and he’ll have to find a way to make it go away another way.

Then, the words sink into the page.

His heart is racing. He notices that his right hand, still holding the quill tightly, started sweating.

For another long moment he’s sure nothing more will happen. It didn’t take so long last time, he thinks. Somehow, it makes him calm down. He doesn’t know why he’s so afraid of the diary when a corporeal Tom Riddle lives next door.

He wants to laugh at himself, but the laugh dies somewhere between his stomach and his mouth.

Slowly, he sees words appear. He recognizes the handwriting as if it was yesterday when he saw it for the first time.

_ Hello, Harry. _

The words sink in.

Another moment passes. Harry feels as if his legs grew into the ground.

Then, Tom writes:

_ It’s been a while. _

Harry jumps from his chair and closes the diary before the words get a chance to disappear. The laugh he’s still holding in wants to turn into a scream.

***

He hears Tom come back. As usual, his steps are quiet and soft.

He makes so little sound, Harry thinks, trying to keep his breathing steady.

He’s been staring at the ceiling for over three hours now trying to fall asleep.

He ran away from that diary as if it burned him. Like a child, he thinks. He hid in his room.

Behind closed doors, he tried to tell himself he must’ve seen it wrong. Maybe he fell asleep for a moment. Or simply imagined it. He wanted a breakthrough so much, didn’t he? Maybe he wanted it so much he made it all up?

When his heart calmed down at last, he got up and took the diary back to Tom’s room. He didn’t dare open it to check if the Tom from the diary had anything else to say.

Now, lying in his bed, listening to Tom wash his teeth behind the wall, he knows he didn’t make it up. He wanted something to happen, but even he couldn't make that up.

He thinks about Tom from the diary. A child, Harry thinks, but then he thinks that he was sixteen when he watched Dumbledore die. Fifteen when he watched Sirius die. Fourteen when he watched-

He tries to stop the spiral. It won’t take him anywhere nice.

The people around you, he hears Georgie’s voice in his head, made you feel like an adult. But you weren’t one, Harry.

Was he an adult when he awakened the basilisk, Harry wonders, or was he only a child.

He thinks about how lonely he felt back then. A child treated like an adult. A child with responsibilities far greater than any adult could take.

It was a choice, he tries to tell himself. No one else could do it.

On the other side of the wall, Tom finishes washing his teeth. Harry hears him rinse his mouth. It’s so human he wants to cry.

He’s already killed them, he thinks. Is there a possibility to go back from something like that. To go on.

He doesn’t know. 

Tom walks out of the bathroom and closes the door behind him. Harry sees the dim light move through the gap under his door. He’s listening to Tom’s steps. It seems that he stopped in the middle of the kitchen.

After a moment, Harry hears him move again.

“There has to be a possibility,” he whispers into the darkness around him.

Because if there’s not, he thinks, then all this is for nothing.

***

When Harry wakes up on the Saturday morning, Tom is already gone.

When he comes back in the afternoon, Harry is ready.

“What’s that,” he hears Tom say without a _ hello _. There is a note of annoyance in his voice, Harry thinks, but his face looks like a mask.

“It’s my birthday,” he says with a smile. 

“Your birthday?”

Tom looks at the table and the pie and the bottle of cherry wine. Then, he looks at Harry again.

“Are you expecting guests?” He asks. Again, the annoyance.

“Guests?” Harry says, genuinely surprised. “No, I was- I was hoping you’d celebrate with me.”

“Me?” Tom says.

When he raises his brows, Harry thinks, he doesn’t look like a statue anymore.

Then, he nods.

For a moment Tom looks like he doesn't really know what to do with himself. His hands go up as if he wants to protest, but he doesn’t say anything. Then, his right hand goes to his hair and he says:

“Should I change?”

“It’s no white tie party,” Harry says. “But I’ll let you take off your shoes.”

Again, that look. Like he’s not sure what to do. With the situation, with Harry and with himself.

In the end, Tom decides to take off his shoes and sit down at the table.

“It’s not the best cake you’ve ever eaten probably,” Harry says. “But it’s edible.”

“You didn’t have to do any of it,” Tom says.

“I wanted to,” Harry says, sitting down.

He cuts a piece of cake for Tom and Tom opens the bottle of wine.

They eat in silence. Harry tries to keep his smile on.

It’s not that hard.

“Why,” Tom says suddenly, looking up from him plate. “Why don’t you go see your family?”

Harry tries to keep his eyes on Tom when he says:

“I don’t have a family.”

“You don’t?” Tom sounds surprised. 

He’s too curious to realize how inappropriate he is, Harry thinks. For now, he doesn’t really mind.

Instead, he says:

“They’re dead.”

He observes the emotions on Tom’s face closely, now that they’re up on the surface. There’s disbelief at first, then something akin to fear.

He wonders if Tom will ask how did they die, but he doesn’t.

“I’m sorry,” he says. It’s Harry’s turn to be surprised. “I thought… What I’m trying to say is that you don’t look like someone who’s been alone.”

Harry’s not sure what to say to that. He drinks his wine, trying to gather his thoughts.

He wasn’t alone, not like that, he thinks. Maybe when he was a child, but later… He had Ron and Hermione. He had Hagrid and Dumbledore. And then he had Mrs Weasley and Sirius and Lupin.

But he felt alone despite all this, didn’t he? He thinks about the night before the second task, when Ron and Hermione disappeared. He thinks about Sirius in the Department of Mysteries. He thinks about Dumbledore falling off the Astronomy Tower.

He thinks about the night he realized he had to die again.

Then, he thinks about everything that came after.

“I’ve been alone,” he says even though he doesn’t mean to. The words leave his mouth against his will.

Tom’s observing him with an odd caution.

“Did we meet before?” Tom says suddenly. “You weren’t at the school, were you?”

Harry shakes his head, as if it could help him get rid of all the thoughts he doesn’t want.

“No,” he says. “My godfather kept me by his side when he was still alive.”

“You seem,” Tom says, “oddly familiar. As if I’ve seen you before or maybe heard your voice somewhere, but I can’t place it, no matter how hard I try.”

“I wouldn’t forget you face,” Harry says and he’s almost sure Tom’s cheeks turn a bit darker.

They sip their wine slowly. Harry feels oddly at peace despite the circumstances.

“When’s your birthday?” He says suddenly.

“In December,” Tom says, though he seems reluctant.

“I’ll make you a cake too,” Harry says. He’s smiling, but Tom looks at him as if he thinks Harry’s making fun of him. “If you won’t have anything better to do, that is,” he adds, trying to sound casual.

Tom looks at his plate. It’s empty and Harry can almost read his mind. He’s hungry. Harry feels that odd sting again. Yes, he’s been alone, but was he ever hungry?

So he moves his hand and another piece cuts itself off the cake.

“Someone has to eat it,” he says when Tom looks at him. “Can’t do it all on my own.”

“It’s really good,” Tom says in exchange and Harry almost believes it. 

“It’s not,” he says. “But I’ll get better by December, I promise.”

“You’re good with wandless magic,” Tom says after a moment. There’re crumbles under his lower lip.

When he sees Harry stare he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

“I had to go wandless for a while,” he says. Not a lie, technically. “Guess it made me improve a bit.”

“A wandmaker without a wand?” Tom says. He raises his eyebrows again and Harry decides he likes it on him.

“It’s a long story.”

“I won’t mind hearing it.”

Harry looks at Tom. For the first time, he too seems more relaxed, as if he lowered his guard, if only a bit. What kind of story would he like to hear, Harry wonders. 

Then, he says:

“I’ll tell you one day. You haven’t unlocked that level of friendship yet.”

Tom looks at him as if he’s speaking a foreign tongue. Then, he lifts his hands and starts laughing.

It’s so unexpected Harry’s not sure what to do.

“You’re so weird,” he hears Tom say. 

He’s covering his mouth as if laughing was a crime, but Harry sees it nonetheless. He knows he’ll never forget it. The first time he saw Tom Riddle laugh. He has no idea where it came from and if it was something he said, but he doesn’t mind. He doesn’t have to know.

When Tom looks up at last, his eyes are bright.

Harry realizes - with a fair dose of disbelief - that somewhere between noon and nine o’clock Tom Riddle has become his friend. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feeling extra under the weather this week - I'll reply to comments when I feel a bit better. ♥ 
> 
> Thanks for reading and see you next Saturday!


	5. Dirty old town

Harry tells Mr Ollivander he’ll be back soon and Mr Ollivander barely looks at him. The Elder Wand has consumed him.

It’s the odd hour in the middle of the day when the street gets quiet for a while before the afternoon rush. He sees a small crowd at Flourish and Blotts as if waiting for someone and gets flashbacks of when he himself was standing in a similar queue trying to buy books and ended up on the front page of The Daily Prophet with Lockhart.

Wasn’t that the day Lucius Malfoy smuggled the diary in Ginny’s books, he thinks, but then tries to forget about it immediately. He’s still not sure what exactly happened the other day between him and the horcrux hidden in Tom’s room.

Though, Harry has to admit, things are going smoother now.

The week between his birthday and now has gone in an air of mutual warming up. He still feels Tom is only talking to him when he has to, but Harry thinks it’s better than nothing and certainly a start. 

He knows he has to act fast now.

Judging by the first letter, he has a month.

Not impossible, he thinks, but definitely challenging.

He walks into Knockturn Alley and it seems even more deserted. There’s not a single person in sight and even though the day is bright, he feels a shiver go down his spine. The last time he was here, Harry realizes, was when he was spying on Draco Malfoy. No one believed him when he said, time after time, that Malfoy was up to something. Surely no one would believe him now either, if he revealed what his plan was. Going back in time only because Malfoy gave him a few old letters… Harry can easily imagine the face Hermione would make. Would Ron protest too? Probably, Harry thinks. Everyone would.

Maybe Dumbledore wouldn’t, he thinks, but he’s not sure.

He walks into the shop and for a moment he’s sure it’s as empty as the street.

Then, he hears a familiar voice:

“Harry?”

Tom walks out from behind a cabinet and Harry gives him a cautious smile.

“Hi,” he says. “You didn’t take your lunch bag. So I thought…”

He doesn’t end. He’s not sure why.

“Oh,” Tom says. He’s looking at Harry in a way that makes Harry want to run away and keep looking back at the same time. 

Something turns in his stomach. He had to eat something bad, he thinks.

“Thank you,” Tom says. His voice sounds nice, Harry thinks. “You didn’t have to.”

“I wanted to,” Harry says before he can stop himself.

For a moment, Tom looks at him like he’s trying to look right through his skull an inside his brain.

Then, he smiles.

“You’re a stubborn one, aren’t you?”

“I’m afraid I am,” Harry says.

He can’t help smiling now and he’s not sure what to say next. It feels like words could only destroy whatever is happening between them.

Then, the door open, and someone rushes into the shop.

Harry sees the change in Tom’s face. It’s so immediate and stark he wouldn’t believe the same person is standing in front of him if he didn’t see the metamorphosis himself.

“Abraxas,” Tom says. His voice sounds different now. “What are you doing here?”

Harry observes Abraxas’ face closely. He seems surprised by Tom’s cold welcome and then his eyes wander towards Harry. He raises his brows. Harry thinks he was wrong thinking Draco was similar to his father or grandfather. He has much more of his mother in him, it seems. Then he remembers the man in front of him will die of dragon pox some time from now. It makes Harry feel odd, simply knowing.

“Guests?” Abraxas is saying now, looking at Tom again and treating Harry like air. “Won’t you introduce me?”

Harry thinks he’s capable of speaking for himself, but before he has a chance, Tom says:

“Abraxas, this is Harry, my flatmate. Harry,” Tom looks at him and opens his hand towards Abraxas, “this is Abraxas, we went to school together.”

Abraxas looks at Harry as if he wants to say there’s more to them than that, but Tom’s eyes are still stern and observing closely.

They shake hands. Harry feels as if Abraxas catalogued him with one long look, from his head to his toes. It doesn’t feel nice and reminds him of the way Draco looked at Ron on their first day of school.

If he knew, Harry thinks, that his grandson would try so hard to befriend me, would he be looking at me like this?

He thinks about it for a moment and then again about dragon pox. 

Then, he notices that Tom seems nervous and Abraxas unsure.

“I only dropped by to ask,” Abraxas says, “will I see you next week?”

“Yes,” Tom says before Abraxas can say anything more than that.

“The usual place?” Abraxas says despite that.

This time, Tom only nods.

Harry feels out of place. It’d be much more helpful if he was eavesdropping from behind one of the cabinets or maybe wearing his Invisibility Cloak.

“I should be going,” he says.

Abraxas looks at him as if he almost forgot Harry was in the room with him. Tom seems- Harry thinks Tom seems irritated and disappointed.

It can’t be true, he thinks almost immediately.

All of a sudden, the shop feels stuffy. As if all the air has disappeared.

He walks out ignoring Tom’s “See you later”.

***

Harry comes back to Mr Ollivander’s shop only to learn that Dumbledore walked out minutes ago. For some reason it makes him feel awfully lonely.

It’s been a while since he had a chance to talk to anyone for real, he thinks. He misses Hermione and Ron and Sirius and Lupin. He misses his London flat and his secretary and Georgie. He misses birthday letters from Hagrid with the traditional inedible cake. He misses so many things at once he thinks he may cry.

So he hides in the back of the shop and starts carving some fresh twigs. He hears Mr Ollivander say Dumbledore brought these from Hogwarts.

When someone walks into the shop and Mr Ollivander rushes to the front desk, Harry feels tears on his cheeks.

***

He keeps a close eye on Tom for the entirety of the next two weeks, wondering when exactly will he go see Abraxas at “the usual place”. 

More than anything, he’s worried about what it all means. Secret meetings sound like recruiting potential Death Eaters and Harry is suspicious. Disappointed too. Nowhere near finding a solution to world’s future issues with Voldemort, he feels a bit hopeless.

Throughout the week, Tom acts awfully normal. Normal for a regular person, Harry thinks, and it surprises him. For some reason he thought Tom would be more… He’s not sure what. More darklord-ish probably. More distant and uninterested.

But Tom talks when they eat together in the evening and sometimes when Harry gets up early enough to catch him in the morning. They go shopping together one day and split their bills. Tom is careful with money and knows how to bargain. Harry listens to him talk to merchants and hears him slip into an accent he hasn’t heard from him before. He looks at Tom when he’s reading in their shared kitchen, so lost in thoughts it seems the worlds doesn’t exist anymore. He makes Tom coffee in the morning and Tom makes him tea in the evening.

Some days it’s so easy to forget who Tom is. Who he’ll become.

Maybe he won’t, Harry thinks, and holds onto that hope desperately.

***

It’s a Thursday at the end of August when something happens at last.

It’s a long day at Mr Ollivander’s shop too and by the end of it Harry is barely alive. The measuring tape keeps fighting him for hours and at one point almost suffocates an innocent soon-to-be Hogwarts student. There’s a lot of repairing to be done after the chaos of wands choosing their masters but Mr Ollivander seems happy with how Harry handles things and even tells him that - maybe - it will soon be time for him to try his best at actual wand making.

Truthfully, Harry’s too tired to offer anything but a faint smile but Mr Ollivander seems satisfied.

When they close the shop at last, he tells Harry to get some proper night sleep. Tomorrow is the last day before the school year starts.

But even though there is nothing Harry craves more than a hot bath and lying down, he sticks to his routine. Before anything else, he has to check on Tom.

All the other days he's found Tom sitting at the desk at Borgin and Burkes with an enormous book of records. Sometimes there’s parchment there too, a quill and some ink and Tom looks as if he’s writing letters. A few times Harry follows him when he leaves and doesn’t seem to be going home, but it’s all in vain - Tom ends up at the Leaky Cauldron or simply grocery shopping and Harry feels like a fool.

But today things seem different.

When Harry arrives at his usual spot, Tom is closing the shop. It’s way too early, Harry thinks, and barely has time to hide when Tom walks his way, clearly heading back to Diagon Alley.

When Tom passes him by mere inches, Harry sees a book in his hands. It’s the one he’s been seeing often in their kitchen lately, the Freud. Harry’s noticed Tom made lots of notes and wrote all over it and it reminded him of Hermione at first before he realized she’d probably be mad at this comparison.

He tries to follow Tom close enough not to lose him. It gets a bit tricky at the Leaky Cauldron - is he heading to Muggle London, Harry wanders, and why - but he manages to go past the few wizards and witches trying to order dinner.

It’d be much worse on a Friday, Harry thinks, going past an elderly wizard wearing something looking suspiciously like silken pajamas.

When they go out into the city, he realizes his task will be much harder now. 

Spending so much time in the confined space of Diagon Alley, Harry almost forgot how busy Muggle London can be.

He curses himself for not putting some sort of tracking spell on Tom or maybe his shoes so he wouldn’t notice too easily.

Obviously, it’s too late for it now.

So he tries to keep Tom within his eyesight and prays for him not to disapparate.

Thankfully, someone grants his wishes.

Tom goes into a bookshop.

Harry stays on the sidewalk somewhat dumbfounded.

Are Death Eaters holding meetings in a Muggle bookshop?

It sounds too fantastical to be true. Tom Riddle wouldn’t think of this kind of disguise, Harry decides, wondering what to do next.

He thinks that maybe he could try a few spying spells but he’s too nervous about Tom noticing. It’d destroy all he already managed to do. How close they got to each other.

So he decides to wait. He can’t see Tom through the front window. There are only books.

He keeps looking at his watch, but time seems to stay in place.

He taps his shoe against the pavement. He looks at the cars driving by. He makes sure people don’t bump into his invisible self.

Tom comes out twenty-three minutes later. Harry notices he has a different book in his hands now, not as big. The cover is pale blue.

Tom walks on and Harry has very little time to decide what to do next. Should he follow him or…

He sighs. With all the time he had waiting, he should’ve come up with some kind of a plan, shouldn’t he?

He looks at Tom’s back, some distance away already. He looks at the bookshop.

He takes a deep breath in and takes off his Invisibility Cloak on the breath out.

Then, he walks into the bookshop.

The inside is sparsely decorated. What else is needed with so many books, Harry wonders. 

It seems he’s the only person there apart from the young clerk.

Harry walks further in and casts a few scanning spells, though he’s not sure what he’s looking for.

His not even surprised when he doesn’t find anything suspicious at all.

Despite this, he walks between the shelves, looking for clues.

Maybe a book, he thinks. Maybe they pass information through this place.

He almost wants it to be true, but even in his head, it sounds way too much like a Sherlock Holmes novel.

“Can I help you, sir?” The clerk walks up to him. Harry notices he adds the “sir” after an almost unnoticeable moment of thought.

Harry wonders if he looks old enough to deserve this kind of respect.

He wants to say “no” and walk out, but instead he says:

“Yes.”

The clerk looks at him, awaiting some kind of follow up.

Harry thinks it’d be better if he could leave his own brain in his room sometimes.

But in the end, how much does he have to lose?

“This may sound weird, I warn you,” he says in the end.

The man raises his brows a bit but doesn’t seem too phased otherwise.

“Are you with the police?” He asks.

Harry curses himself for not thinking about it earlier.  He takes his chance and goes with it.

“Yes,” he says. “In a way. I’m,” he wonders what to say next, “I’m looking into a matter of grave state importance.”

The man doesn’t say anything. He just waits.

“I’ll need your full discretion,” Harry says, trying to recall everything he’s heard in the few movies he’s seen in his life.

The man nods.

“I’m at your service, sir.”

This time the “sir” sounds much less hesitant.

“We’re suspecting,” Harry says, “that there’s a chance of a potentially dangerous gang using this place as a hideout or maybe a meeting place.”

He watches the clerk’s face closely. Shock changes into disbelief into fear.

“A meeting place? Here?” He looks around as if he’s sure a thief or murder may jump out from behind a shelf any moment now.

“Did you see anyone suspicious lately?” Harry asks. 

“Suspicious how?”

“Maybe someone coming in multiple times or on a certain day,” he explains, but the clerk is already shaking his head.

“No, no,” he says. “I’d notice that for sure. We don’t exactly have crowds here.”

He opens his arms as if embracing the empty shop. Harry realizes no one else has walked in after him despite the street being pretty busy.

“So no suspicious strangers,” Harry says, taking notes. The clerk is looking closely. “What about the man who walked out right before me?”

“Oh,” the clerk says, looking as if he’s trying to remember, “Oh, you mean Tom?”

“So you know him?” Harry hopes the surprise in his voice isn’t too obvious.

“Oh yes,” the clerk says, “I knew him most of my life. We grew up together.”

Harry feels him brain trying to catch up. Tom? The Tom he knows? Talking to someone he grew up with at Wool’s orphanage? Why didn’t Dumbledore tell him? Did he even know?

“We shared a room for a while,” the clerk is saying now, and it takes a lot of will for Harry to focus on his words again, “but then he went to a private school somewhere outside London and I got adopted by Mr and Mrs Daniels. We grew up at an orphanage you see,” he says, looking Harry straight in the eyes, as if testing him and showing he’s not ashamed, “and I didn’t expect to see Tom ever again.”

“But clearly you did,” Harry says, trying not to sound too bitter. He’s not sure where it’s coming from.

“I was surprised, to be quite honest,” the clerk says. “He showed up two years ago. Said he saw the ad we put in the newspaper. Looking for an editor.”

“An editor?”

“Yes, a book editor. To look through first editions.”

“So that’s why he’s been carrying a different book,” Harry says, more to himself than the man, but he hears it anyway.

“Yes,” he says, with a bit of a smile. “He’s really fast. And really thorough.”

Harry looks up from his notes. Why is this smile getting on his nerves so much all of a sudden? He’s not sure, he tells himself, but deep down, he thinks he knows.

He’s annoyed because this man knows some other Tom, a Tom he, Harry, doesn’t.

It’s shouldn’t mean anything, he thinks, but yet, it suddenly does.

Maybe, Harry thinks suddenly, and the thought cuts through his mind like lightning, both terrifying and striking, maybe that’s the man from the letters. Maybe that’s the one who’s been waiting.

If that’s him, he tries to tell himself, if that’s him then everything should be easier now, but he can’t convince himself.

He feels out of breath.

“I,” he says, looking at his shoes, forcing his legs to move, “I think that’ll be all for now. Thank you,” he says, “for your cooperation.”

“Shouldn’t you take my name at least?” The clerk says, following Harry to the door. “In case you need me again?”

“A name,” Harry says, as if he’s hearing the word for the first time in his life, “Of course, a name.”

He put his pen to the piece of paper again, trying no to look at the man. If he does, he’ll never forget his face and he has to. He can’t know his face, never.

“Dennis,” the clerk says. “Dennis Bishop.”

It sounds oddly familiar, Harry thinks, but he can’t place it.

Dennis Bishop. Where did he hear it before?

Then, it hits him.

He looks up against his will.

The man is standing right in front of him. His eyes are blue and there are a few freckles on his nose. His hair is the colour of wheat, Harry thinks. 

Would it look good next to Tom's?

He shrugs. An impulse goes through his body. He has no idea where that came from.

_They were funny... Never the same again_, he hears somewhere at the back of his head. It's a voice from another life. He sees the woman whom it belongs to. She's sitting behind a desk. Dumbledore is there too.

Dennis Bishop. He writes it down. His hands are shaking and it's hard to hide it.

How is it even possible. Didn't Tom do something so horrible to this boy he was never like he used to be? Before the cave? It doesn't make sense. Why would Tom come back to him on purpose? Why would Tom look for him at all?

"Goodbye," he says in the end. The distance between him and the door seems endless. "Thank you for your assistance."

"No problem," Dennis says, still following his every step. "If you'd need anything…"

But Harry doesn't heart what he should do. He's already outside. The door closes.

***

His thoughts are so loud he barely sees where he’s going. The city he thought he knew seems like a stranger to him suddenly and his legs can’t find his old tracks.

Why is it so hard to accept that this may be him, Harry tries to answer, but his own feelings are too messy. Messed up, he thinks. He’s the one who’s messed up. And jealous, he realizes suddenly. He’s jealous of this man knowing some other Tom, maybe a more real one. One that Harry never got to know.

Why does it bother him so much, he wonders. Why does he care so much.

He hears Ginny somewhere at the back of his head. In the end, if things turned out the other way around, would Tom ever spare him a single thought? A single what if?

The answer burn somewhere deep inside him but he doesn’t want to accept it.

He thinks… Well, isn’t life pretty fun the way it is now? Working with Mr Ollivander, having tea with Minerva and coming back to the small flat knowing Tom’s still not Voldemort. Because he isn’t, right?

Harry feels his hands curl into fists. 

Why is he so stupid? Why? Why can’t he think about himself for once and not everyone else? The greater good hasn’t been good for him a single time. There’s been only pain and disappointment and loneliness. Why not do things the way he wants to for once?

He’s walking so fast he bumps into a middle-aged woman discussing something with a shopkeeper. She says something to him and gives him a disapproving look, but he doesn’t hear a word and barely sees anything.

He thinks about Hermione and Ron and Ginny, how they’d be disappointed with him. He could save them all, he thinks. But then he realizes he already did.

There are too many feelings inside him and he doesn’t know which one to focus on first. His breathing gets faster. He’s almost running now.

Then, out of nowhere, he feels a hand on his arm. Before he knows what’s happening, a rope he cannot see pulls him into a deserted alley.

“Did he send you?”

Tom’s face is so close to his he can feel Tom’s breath on his cheek.

Tom looks angry. Furious, Harry thinks. His eyes are burning.

“What?” He manages to choke out, but Tom’s arm is keeping him from moving.

“I asked,” Tom says, voice heavy and hot, “did Dumbledore send you? To spy on me?”

Harry blinks. He’s trying not to move much because it only makes Tom press his arm harder against Harry’s throat. His eyes get teary.

He doesn’t know how exactly Tom wants him to give an answer when he can’t speak so he shakes his head a bit and closes his eyes.

The pressure on his throat doesn’t lessen but Tom asks:

“So what were you doing there? In the bookshop?”

Oh God, Harry thinks, Tom must’ve seen him. Did he know from the very beginning that Harry was following him? Was he really that obvious?

He shakes his head again, even though it’s hardly an answer.

The pressure lessens a tiny bit.

Harry tries to take a deeper breath. His head feels all weird and light.

“I was curious,” he whispers. Then, he coughs.

Tom lets him go.

“Curious?” He says. “About what?”

Harry leans against the brick wall for balance and closes his eyes again. Even the darkness seems to be spinning.

“Thought you were meeting with Abraxas Malfoy,” he says.

Technically, not a lie.

“And why would that interest you?” 

Tom sounds suspicious again. Suspicious, angry, annoyed. Maybe scared, just a bit.

It hits Harry suddenly. He’s never heard the other Tom talk like that. Paranoid, cold, distant. These were the notes of Lord Voldemort. But this Tom is so hot headed he goes through a whole dictionary of emotions in a few minutes.

Harry tries not to smile.

He fails.

“What’s so funny?” Tom asks, coming closer again.

Harry raises his hands up.

“Nothing,” he says. “I just… I’ve never seen you like this.”

Tom’s brows furrow. Harry bites the inside of his right cheek to stop himself from smiling again.

He realizes it’s all so good to look at because Tom is human.

“Is this some game for you?” Tom is asking now. He doesn’t seem so angry anymore. “Who will you tell that I’m fraternizing with people like him?”

Harry puts his hands down.

“What?” He says, looking at Tom with surprise. His heart is calming down at last. “I won’t tell anyone if you don't want me to.”

“I don’t,” Tom says quickly.

“I don’t think it’s something wrong though,” Harry goes on, trying to read the new emotion on Tom’s face. “Fraternizing.”

Tom gives him a long unreadable look. Harry wishes he could see into his mind like he used to.

Then, Tom says:

“Are you sure Dumbledore didn’t send you?”

“I’ve seen that man one time at the shop,” he says. Technically not a lie. “And he didn’t seem to like me much, if I’m being honest.”

“Oh,” Tom says. 

He seems to be going over something in his head for a moment.

“He makes his judgement quickly,” Tom says in the end. “He made one about me the first time we met, if that comforts you.”

Harry smiles. He’s not sure if that’s true, but if it is… Maybe Dumbledore was wrong. It wouldn’t be his first time, Harry thinks.

Tom is still looking at him. Whatever he’s thinking about, his eyes make Harry feel the same thing he’s felt before, back in their kitchen. He thinks he could look in Tom’s eyes for a long time without breathing.

Tom blinks. Harry blinks too. Whatever happened, passed. Harry realizes they’re standing in an empty alley. It’s a dead end. Someone opens a window above Harry’s head and he hears a woman talk. A car drives by. Harry thinks they can’t be far away from Grimmauld Place. Is this where his legs were taking him, he wonders.

“Should we,” he hears Tom say, “go for a walk? Since we’re already here,” he adds quickly. He’s not looking at Harry anymore.

Harry nods.

Suddenly, he feels Tom’s hand on his arm. He’s not sure what’s happening. His heart skip a beat.

Then, he feels a pull somewhere above his navel and the whole world disappears.

***

His feet hit the ground unexpectedly and Harry stumbles.

“You could’ve warned me,” he says, trying to catch his balance again, but ending up on the ground.

“Sorry,” Tom says. He doesn’t look very sorry, Harry thinks. But he’s smiling a bit too, so Harry doesn’t mind that much. “I didn’t mean to-”

“I’m fine,” he says, accepting Tom’s hand and standing up. “Where are we anyway?”

He looks around. They’re somewhere by the river, but he’s not familiar with this part of the city. There’s no one in sight on the land, but on the river, Harry sees a few barges moving slowly west. The sun is setting, but it’s not too cold yet.

“Somewhere I like to be,” he hears Tom say. He’s only a few steps away.

Harry follows. He can feel the breeze coming from the water. Tom puts his hands inside his pockets.

They walk in silence for some time. It has to be some kind of a park, Harry thinks. The paths look well taken care of and Harry spots a porch or two here and there. He’s a few steps behind Tom, not really trying to catch him just yet. Tom turns his head a single time, making sure Harry is still there. Harry smiles at him and Tom smiles back. It’s so gentle Harry wants to rip his own heart from his chest so he doesn’t have to feel what he’s feeling anymore.

His thoughts are scattered. What happened between the bookshop and now? He’s not sure. He thought Tom was angry with him and that he saw the Tom he thought he knew, the Tom who’d haunt him when the day came. Clearly, he was wrong. This Tom just kept changing like summer weather.

And the bookshop. He thought Tom hates… That he hates everyone who isn’t magical. Who isn’t worthy of magic too. But this Tom is making coin - fraternizing - with Muggles.

With Dennis, Harry thinks, the Dennis who was so afraid after that one summer Mrs Cole thought he was no longer quite right in the head. He seems perfectly alright now, Harry thinks, looking at Tom’s back. What exactly happened between these two?

He sighs. There’s so much going on in his head right now, he wants to lie down and close his eyes and think about nothing at all.

His own feelings are a mess too and he doesn’t even want to touch them. Not now. Not when everything around him seems so peaceful and easy. 

Maybe it is easy, Harry thinks. He sees Tom stop by an old tree; he’s waiting for him.

“I come here often,” Tom says when Harry catches up. “It’s my favourite spot.”

Tom is looking towards the river and Harry’s eyes follow.

The sun is sinking slowly and there are birds singing in the trees above their heads. On the shore, Harry sees a small haven, but there are no boats moored there.

He looks at Tom, but Tom seems lost in thoughts. Harry thinks he could look at Tom like this without getting bored. If he could trap him in this moment, would future happen at all? Once more, he regrets not being able to feel Tom’s feelings anymore. Maybe they’d make more sense than his own.

“Sometimes I’m not sure why it bothers me so much,” Tom says suddenly, still not looking at Harry, “that Abraxas and everyone else could find out.”

“Find out that you fraternize?” Harry catches up after a moment.

Tom nods. Harry sees the frown on his face and thinks whatever is going on in Tom’s head may be, in the end, as messy as what’s in his own.

“I don’t really care about them that much,” Tom says. “Abraxas and everyone else from school. They don’t,” he stops there suddenly, but Harry guesses the rest.

“They don’t care about you,” he says.

Tom looks at him at last. There’s something odd about him, as if he’s trying to figure out Harry’s intentions.

“Do you like making people uncomfortable,” Tom says, “or is just me?”

There’s no smile in it and so Harry doesn’t know what to say. Does he really make people uncomfortable, he wonders. Or is just Tom?

“I don’t mind,” Tom says, before Harry has a chance to make up his mind. “It’s nice to have someone who talks to me. Like you.”

Harry thinks he doesn’t have to ask why no one else does. Tom means little to nothing at all to so many people. And it’s always been this way. That’s how he’s felt all his life probably.

“When I was at school,” Tom says, as if following Harry’s thoughts, “I was sure things’ve changed. For a little while.”

“But then school has ended,” Harry says, thinking his own thoughts now, “and life turned out to be so different from what it was supposed to be.”

A boat appears on the river and Harry observes it for a long moment. There are three seagulls in the sky.

“Didn’t you tell me your godfather raised you?” Tom says. Once again, he’s looking at Harry with that dose of suspicious that hardly ever leaves him. “You didn’t go to Hogwarts, right?”

“I used to go to a Muggle school,” Harry says, trying not to tell more lies. Keeping up with his double life is harder than he thought it’d be. “My godfather didn’t find me until I was thirteen.”

“So you lived with Muggles too?”

Harry nods.

“Did you?” He asks, even though he knows.

For a moment he thinks Tom won’t answer.

Then, he says:

“I grew up in an orphanage.” 

Harry has some understanding that whatever he says now may be crucial for both him, Tom and the world as he knows it. But he can’t be silent for too long either.

“I’m sorry,” he says in the end. He’s not sure if it’s the right thing. But he really does feel sorry for Tom.

“You don’t have to,” Tom says. He’s looking at his shoes and kicking a small stone.

“I want to,” Harry says. He feels like they’ve already had this conversation before and that maybe Tom needs to hear it more often still. That someone is sorry for what he went through. Harry thinks he wanted to hear it too. 

“Did your parents,” Tom starts, but doesn’t end.

“They were murdered,” Harry says. He can feel Tom shiver next to him. They’re standing arm to arm and he’s not sure how it happened. “And I stayed with my Muggle aunt. I didn’t know I was a wizard until,” he stops. He’s almost told Tom about the letter from the school. He tries to make something up, but Tom says:

“I knew way before Dumbledore came for me. And I,” he stops, still not looking at Harry, “I used it.”

They’re silent for a long minute. There’s something heavy about Tom’s words and Harry knows why. He’s not sure if he should press or maybe wait. 

“Dennis,” Tom says, “we used to share a room. But I,” he stops again. Harry sees him put his hands into fists, as if trying to control himself, “I really wanted to have that room for myself.”

Harry thinks about his cupboard under the stairs. Was that worse? He can’t be sure. What he can be sure of though is the joy he felt when he got Dudley’s old room.

“So what did you do?” Harry asks, taking a chance.

“I took them to a cave, when we were by the sea,” Tom says. “Him and that stupid girl who wouldn’t leave us alone.” Harry hears anger in Tom’s voice. He’s clenching his fists so hard his knuckles turn white. “I knew they couldn’t swim and there was a lake hidden inside the caves. I can still see how dark the water was when I close my eyes.”

Harry sees that Tom does just that. 

“I wanted to scare them, just a bit,” Tom says. “So they’d leave me alone.” He takes a deep breath. “And they did.”

“What did you do to them?” Harry asks before he can think. 

Tom keeps his eyes closed.

“I made them fall, time after time, and kept them under,” he says. Harry feels him shiver again. “And I’d bring them back just before it was too late. And then,” he stops. Harry can feel the tension in his body. “I told them no one would believe them anyway.”

“So they didn’t tell anyone,” Harry says, thinking about the two children who were Tom’s first playthings. “Did you get your room?” He asks.

Tom opens his eyes and looks at Harry again. He’s unreadable, Harry thinks. But maybe Harry’s unreadable for him too.

“I did,” Tom says. He doesn’t smile at all. “I got my room and I never felt more lonely.”

Harry doesn’t know what to say to this.

“Won’t you say that you’re sorry again?” Tom says. 

“I won’t,” Harry says.

Tom takes a step away from the tree and for a moment Harry thinks that maybe that’s it, maybe that’s the end. He said two words too much.

But Tom doesn’t look angry with him. If anything, he seems resigned.

“I couldn’t find the girl,” he says, his back turned to Harry now, “but I found Dennis.”

Tom takes a few more steps down the path and Harry follows.

“I took his memories back,” Tom says when Harry is next to him. “From that day.”

Harry thinks it makes sense now. Tom visiting the bookshop, Dennis offering him work - surely, he wouldn’t do it if he remembered who Tom was. 

“Does it make it up?” He says. “For what you’ve done?”

He’s pretty sure he shouldn’t ask because Tom looks at him and for a brief moment Harry sees - for the first time - the pain and anger he's seen in his Tom. It doesn’t last more than a second and he asks himself if he’s seen it at all, but when Tom speaks again, he sounds bitter:

“No one can change the past.”

Silence again. Harry doesn’t want to tell Tom how wrong he is. Or maybe how right. In the end, won’t the future change? But it won’t be the future he knows, right? Harry thinks about the night by the lake and the man who told him he has to let it happen. He made his decision back then, to stay in this time so some version of him and his parents and his friends could live, but now he’s not so sure anymore. Will these people be the ones he knew? 

And back then he didn’t think much about what it meant for him. Now, it’s much more clear. There is little awaiting him in the future he left behind. His friends maybe, but won’t they be ok without him too? Sooner or later, they’ll be fine for sure. He’ll become a memory, a good one hopefully. And then he’ll become something more like a dream. Someone that maybe wasn’t even there to begin with.

And here… He thinks about the shop. He never thought about being a wandmaker, but did he really think about anything? Life was a constant fight and often he was closer to death than the prosaic matters of school and choosing a career. Yes, he thought being an auror was for him because he liked being a part of Dumbledore’s Army, but teaching a resistance group of students and managing a department at the Ministry of Magic weren’t quite the same thing as it turned out.

He liked teaching, he thinks. Maybe he could be a teacher one day. Or maybe someone else entirely. He could try so many things. He could make mistakes.

Harry smiles to himself and he doesn’t really know why. The evening is warm, the river looks like liquid gold and he’s walking next to someone who’s not entirely lost yet. He doesn’t need much more tonight, he thinks.

He looks at Tom and Tom smiles back. Then, Tom looks away, as if Harry caught him doing something he shouldn’t be doing. Harry feels his ears burn.

A man walks past them and gives Tom a look as if he knows him, but doesn’t say anything. Harry wonders what’s that about, but doesn’t ask. He doesn’t mind the silence, even though it got somewhat heavier.

“I got invited to a party,” Tom says suddenly, as if he too noticed the change between them. “To Hogwarts.”

“Oh,” Harry says. He’s not sure what else he could say.

“There’s that teacher, he’s Head of Slytherin,” Tom say unnaturally quickly, as if filling the space between them with words makes him feel more secure. “You know what Slytherin is, right?”

He throws Harry a quick glance and when Harry nods, he looks ahead again.

“He has that… club, Slug Club,” he says, and Harry feels a bit amused, having it all explained by Tom Riddle of all people. “Because his name is Horace Slughorn, he’s a potion master.”

Harry knows all these things, but he nods anyway.

“He’s been trying to find me a better,” Tom stops suddenly and shakes his head. “Anyway,” he takes a breath, “it’s his party. For his students, current and former, and... For people he knows, I suppose. He knows a lot of people.”

Harry thinks he’s never heard a better description of Horace Slughorn.

He’s still not sure why Tom is telling him all this.

“Will you go?” He says, trying to keep the conversation going, if that’s what making Tom more comfortable.

“I don’t know yet,” he says. “I don’t really like parties… No,” he changes his mind, “I don’t really like Slughorn’s parties.”

Harry barely stops himself from sneering. Instead, he masks it with coughing.

Tom pats his back a few times and asks if he’s alright. Harry nods, trying to hide how that single point of contact made him shiver from something else than the inflicted pain in his ribs.

“If I go,” Tom says, when Harry straightens his back, “it’ll be to see the school again.”

“You liked it there, didn’t you?” Harry says.

“I loved it,” Tom says and Harry thinks he knows that feeling. “It was the first place where I didn’t feel like a freak,” he goes on. “Where I didn’t have to hide.”

Harry knows these feelings so well it’s painful to think someone else knows them too. Because they’re not coming from a good place, he thinks. They’re coming from a dark hopeless place where a school is a home and where students are the a family.

“Sometimes I wonder,” Tom says suddenly, “what things would be like if I wasn’t like this.”

Harry doesn’t know where it comes from. Tom sounds bitter again, like he did when he talked about the past.

“You talk like you're a hundred years old,” Harry says, trying to make it all lighter than it is. “And as your flatmate I can attest you’re really not that bad. Maybe if-”

“You don’t know anything about me,” Tom says and his voice is so desperate Harry stops and just looks at him. “You have no idea what I’ve done. What I’m capable of.”

Harry looks for words but finds so few. He wants to tell Tom a hundred reasons to make things different, but he can’t bring himself to it.

“What you’ve done is in the past,” he says in the end. “But it doesn’t mean you can’t-”

“Can’t change?” Tom cuts hims off. “You wouldn’t want me to if you knew-”

“Whatever you’ve done,” Harry says, words quiet and trembling, “it can’t be undone. You said it yourself. But the future still has to happen.”

Tom snorts. It’s almost a hiss, Harry thinks. Something between an angry cat and a scornful laugh.

He looks like he’s about to say something else or maybe curse him and Harry’s instinct makes him search for his wand in his back pocket.

Tom sees it. Harry freezes in half-motion.

For a moment, he’s not sure what will happen next. His heart is beating fast.

Tom gives him one more sound, that odd half-laugh, like he’s trying to prove Harry wrong but doesn’t know how. 

Then, he disappears.

***

When Harry comes back to their flat, he’s now even sure if Tom is there. The lights are off and everything is quiet.

He’s so annoyed with himself, he goes straight to bed. No shower, no teeth brushing, no bedtime books. He lies down and looks at the ceiling trying not to scream. 

Inside, it burns his throat.

Why did he go so far? Why did he keep pushing Tom when he managed to get so close in a single evening? Why lose all that for his own stupid agenda?

No, he thinks suddenly, kicking his legs against the bed, he shouldn’t cut Tom slack so easily. He, Harry, was right.

This makes him feel even angrier with Tom and himself. With Tom for making him feel like he no longer knows who he is and what he believes in. With himself for letting Tom make him feel this way.

He kicks the bed again. It makes a dangerous sound and Harry wonders if he’ll have to spend the night on the floor. 

Then he remembers he could use magic to repair it anyway.

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath in, trying to control the muscles around his lungs. It used to help him.

But it doesn’t help now. All he sees in the darkness under his eyes is Tom’s face and Tom’s fists. Tom’s arms when they stood next to each other and Tom’s back when Harry followed him into the park.

He sees the river and the seagulls. He sees the tree and Tom under it.

The tree, he thinks.

It reminds him of something.

Then, he remembers.

_Tom_, _your tree by the river_ _has turned gold again._

His heart starts beating faster and he’s not sure why.

He jumps out of his bed and turns the lights on.

The letters appear in his hands and he finds the one with the tree, even though he knows it.

_ and then you kissed me,  _ his eyes follow the words, _ and I could swear I still feel the empty buzzing in my head, as if there was nothing else in this world, nothing but the two of us. You are mine. _

He feels that odd feeling again. As if, somehow, he’s felt it all before. It doesn’t make any sense. 

But there are other feelings in him too. Hope, because someone wrote it. Someone out there who cares for Tom. Someone who loves him, Harry realizes, and this too burns inside his body, this time somewhere under his sternum.

He thinks that maybe he’s jealous. It’s easier if he admits it now, he thinks. He’s jealous of that person who loves Tom and who - maybe - is loved back by him.

He looks at the date. It’s growing closer. October isn’t that far away.

Whoever that is, Harry thinks, they should show up soon. He’s not sure how he feels about that.

Or maybe, it comes to him suddenly, they’re already here. Maybe that’s where Tom’s going when he disappears. Maybe that’s why he’s never home.

His breath quickens. Harry feels ridiculous. He came here for this purpose alone, to find that person and make Tom come back to them and now- No, he can’t jeopardize it all. Not now. Not when he already made everything so much more difficult.

He lies down again. The lights turn off.

When he closes his eyes, he sees Tom’s face again. They’re standing by the tree and he’s looking at Harry in that peculiar way. As if Harry is a book in a language he can’t quite understand.

Maybe, Harry thinks, slipping into a dream, they won’t show up at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and see you next Saturday!


End file.
